Story time session for International Mother Language Day 2014

Do you know Eric Carle's book 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar'?

In the past three years we have been celebrating International Mother Language Day with a multilingual story time session. The 2014 motto is “Local languages for global citizenship: spotlight on science.”

This year we will meet again at the State Library of WA for an exciting book reading in many languages.The event is on 21 February 2014 from 10am for a 10:30 start in their children's area 'The Place', first floor, 26 Francis Street in Northbridge, Perth, Western Australia.

We love this colourful and simple book and if fits the 2014 theme perfectly. Through this book we learn, repeat and practice the colours and lower numbers in many languages and we also learn about the science behind the development of a butterfly.

This book served us well in the past years and will again be the feature of the event which also includes a creative activity for pre-schoolers. We plan to read the book in English, German, Spanish, Indonesian, French and Italian and we hope to add a few more community languages, including Mandarin, Arabic and Hebrew if we can organise native speakers to be part of the event.

As we only have the hard copy of the big book in English which we use to show the pages. Following each page the native speaker reads out the words in the native language, as the pages get turned by the reader or a helper.  This worked very well in the past years and helped us overcome difficulties in locating the actual hard copy book in the other languages. This year we hope to initiate simultaneous story time sessions on this book, all over Australia and even further.

The book was originally written in German.

Watch Eric Carle himself read the book in German "Die kleine Raupe Nimmersatt."

The book has been translated into at least 49 languages. We found texts in various languages on the internet and here are some of the resources we used:

This is a lovely French version of 'La chenille qui fait des trous' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBpHkMgWld8

Here is the South American Spanish version 'Oruga Muy Hambrienta': 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcYgc2zklq8&feature=related

Another Spanish title is 'La pequeña oruga glotona': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlvsDn_5lU8. [Thank you to Irene for alerting us to this title. :)]

The Italian version 'Il piccolo bruco Maizacio' is available here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inyijOtHscU

The Portuguese title is 'A lagartinha comilona'. The pages are available in a power point document here: http://www.slideshare.net/edanona/a-lagartinha-comilona-27450374:. You find the a reading here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgqmvsDfGyI. 

Please leave links to any additional resources on public pages as a comment below and also let us know if you are hosting a similar event in any other library in Australia or elsewhere. We would welcome very much if your library, ethnic organisation, parent group or even families in your private home would join us and read Eric Carle's book on that day.

Please take photos and share them in your network and with us. We are on facebook too https://www.facebook.com/BilingualFamiliesPerth.

Many thanks
Irma from Bilingual Families Perth
bilingualfamilies@yahoo.com.au
www.bilingualfamilies.net