Language Lizard Update

Dear Reader:

Happy New Year!

In December we held our first “thank you” drawing exclusively for our Culture Connection subscribers, offering a Language Lizard gift certificate and world music CD to our winner. We plan to continue this tradition, and our next drawing will be held during World Folktales and Fables Week (March 5-11).

We encourage all teachers, librarians and parents to incorporate world folktales, fables, myths and legends in their lessons and story times. Folktales provide a way to teach social lessons and explore other cultures, and children love the stories. Our feature article, which talks about using world folktales and fables to educate and entertain, may spark some thoughts on how to use these stories with your children and students.

To encourage you to explore folktales with your kids, we are offering a 10% discount on a few of our popular bilingual folktales and fables now through March 11th. See more about this special offer below.

Finally, we are excited to announce that we will be adding lesson plans to our site. Student teachers from West Chester College in Pennsylvania, under the guidance of their instructor Professor Heather Leaman, have used Language Lizard books to develop excellent lesson plans for elementary school students. The units teach themes of culture and customs, folklore, appreciating differences, building community and understanding diverse religions. We will provide more information about the lesson plans soon, along with appropriate links.

Please forward this newsletter to others who are interested in raising and teaching multicultural kids. They can sign up by visiting http://www.LanguageLizard.com.

Happy reading!

Anneke Forzani
Founder and President
Language Lizard, LLC

Book Review: Fox Fables
Retold by Dawn Casey, illustrated by Jago
Review by Carol Holland

Fox Fables is a collection of two fables, one from Aesop and one from traditional Chinese folklore. The first, the Fox and the Crane, tells the story of one-upmanship between the fox and the crane. Fox invites Crane over for dinner, but to prove his superiority, serves the delicious meal in a bowl from which Crane cannot eat. Crane decides to play the same trick on Fox, so invites Fox over for dinner, then serves the meal in a dish from which Fox cannot eat either. Fox learns a lesson about feeling too superior over others.

In the second fable, Fox finds himself face-to-face with Tiger, who wants to eat Fox for lunch. Fox decides to outwit Tiger by claiming that he is King of the Forest. To prove it, Fox invites Tiger to follow him throughout the forest to show that all the animals are scared of Fox. As the pair go through the forest, every time they happen upon an animal, it runs away in fear. Tiger is astonished to see the animals all run from Fox, never realizing that they are actually running away from Tiger himself. Humbled, Tiger leaves Fox alone. Fox is amused by his own cleverness.

The drawings in this book are beautiful and the colors vibrant. The stories are easy to read and younger children will enjoy the pictures and tales. Older children will also benefit from the “lessons” of the fables.

Fox Fables is available in English with Albanian, Arabic, Bengali, Bulgarian, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Croatian, Farsi, French, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Kurdish, Panjabi, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Scottish Gaelic, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog (Philippines), Tamil, Turkish, Twi, Urdu, Vietnamese and Yoruba. Explore this folktale in your language!

If you’re interested in purchasing this book, please visit the Fox Fables webpage at http://www.languagelizard.com/Fox_Fables_p/fox.htm.

Special Subscriber Offer: 10% Discount on Popular World Folktales & Fables

Through March 11 th 2007 (the end of World Folktales and Fables Week), we are offering a 10% discount on the following three popular folktales.

Simply apply Coupon Code CCS-FT upon checkout to receive the discount:

• Fox Fables (see product review above): http://www.languagelizard.com/Fox_Fables_p/fox.htm
• The Giant Turnip, a humorous retelling of the classic Russian Folktale: http://www.languagelizard.com/The_Giant_Turnip_p/turnip.htm
• The Dragon’s Tears, a classic Asian folktale illustrated by a master of Chinese brush art illustration: http://www.languagelizard.com/The_Dragon_s_Tears_p/tears.htm

To see Language Lizard’s full collection of Folk Tales and Fables, visit: http://www.languagelizard.com/Folk_Stories_Fables_s/21.htm. The collection includes Ali Baba & The Forty Thieves, Goldilocks & The Three Bears, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, Hansel & Gretel, The Pied Piper, The Buskers of Bremen and many other favorites.

If you would like to have a sense of level of difficulty of these and other Language Lizard books, please visit our “Book Suggestions” page at http://www.languagelizard.com/images/Childrens_Bilingual_Books.pdf

Feature Article: World Folktales and Fables: Effective Teaching Tools to Educate and Entertain Children

By Anneke Forzani

Children love folktales and fables. With their simple characters and settings, as well as an enticing conflict early in the story, folktales immediately grab a reader’s attention. Recall The Three Billy Goats Gruff, in which all three goats need to get to the other side of the bridge for food, but a hungry troll stands in their way. The stories develop quickly, and often obstacles seem insurmountable before, in the end, everything is resolved to our satisfaction. Good triumphs over evil.

The repetition and rhythm we see in stories such as Goldilocks and the Three Bears and The Little Red Hen and the Grains of Wheat, also are very appealing to children. And, of course, everyone loves when humor and cunning are used to outsmart an adversary.

Reading world folktales and fables is not only a wonderful way to entertain and bond with children, it is also an effective way to educate them. The stories in classic folklore offer both social lessons as well as an opportunity to teach about cultures and languages.

Folktales provide an excellent way to teach kids about the consequences of good and bad behavior, the importance of cooperation, and the rewards of courage and ingenuity. In one of my favorite stories, The Giant Turnip (an adaptation of the Russian story The Enormous Turnip), a class grows a huge turnip and works together to figure out how to pull it out of the ground. The story helps young children grasp the benefits of community and working together.

Folktales also offer a great entry point for teaching children about other cultures. For instance, the fable Dragon’s Tears is a wonderful starting point to explore Chinese Culture. Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves can be used to begin teaching and learning about Arabic culture.

Bilingual editions of these traditional stories allow the parent or teacher to expose children not only to a different culture, but also to another language. I like to use Language Lizard’s bilingual version of the Indian folktale Buri and the Marrow (in which Buri wears an Indian sari) to expose my children to traditional Indian stories and foreign language scripts. The audio CD even lets them hear the story in Bengali and other foreign languages.

Folktales and fables have survived the test of time for a reason. So pick up a story, sit down with a child, and enjoy!

Anneke Forzani is President and Founder of Language Lizard, LLC. Language Lizard offers a complimentary e-newsletter for parents and teachers interested in exposing children to other languages and cultures. The company also offers bilingual children’s books in over 40 languages, including a wide range of folktales and fables from around the world.

© Anneke V. Forzani, Language Lizard, LLC. 2007

Want to use this article in your e-zine or web site? Contact Anneke Forzani at [email protected].

To see more articles and archived Language Lizard newsletters, please visit http://www.languagelizard.com/newsresources.htm.