free books and stories and fables and poems and rhymes, all online, in so many languages!

While researching my articles on French language activities for Multilingual Living, I realized that I could probably stop buying books for Griffin entirely--both in English and in French--beause so very many books exist online already, and some on websites that can even boast animation and/or professional narrators!

(Oh, let's be honest. I'll never stop buying books.)

Anyway, here are some sites that I've explored lately. I hope you'll enjoy them too!

free online children's books--because you can't always find an older cousin to read to you

Tumblebooks:
I first blogged about this program three years ago; read my original post about how it works, the few aspects I don't like about it, and how you could use it in a language classroom. Briefly, you select a picture book, chapter book, or nonfiction book in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, or Russian. (Predictably, English predominates; click on the "language learning" button at the top of the page to access the books in one of the other languages.) You watch the story unfurl onscreen, with a narrator reading aloud while the lines of text are highlighted like a karaoke storytime. You can opt to have it advance automatically or manually. Many of the picture books have activities that accompany them--matching games, quiz questions, and so forth. If your public library or school doesn't subscribe to Tumblebooks, you can access it through the Lafayette Public Library's kid's stuff page.

We Give Books:
At this charitable giving site, everytime you read a book, the publisher (Penguin Books) will donate one to the nonprofit organization of your choice. You have to sign up (for free) and the selection is fairly limited (smaller than Tumblebooks), but it's hard to argue with the idea! The books, all in English, are geared to ages ten and under and include both DK nonfiction titles (which my kids in Reading Buddies love) and familiar picture books--definitely a plus. You (or your child) do have to actually read the book yourself from pages identical to those of the printed book.

Lire et RéCréer:
This site in French has short stories, fables, poems, and nursery rhymes, both classic and contemporary. The text is presented on the screen, often with simple animation and background music, but the reader is (usually) invited to pronounce it aloud (note that music will start when the site is opened).The tales are divided by genre and also by age. It doesn't have as many "bells and whistles" as Tumblebooks, but it's all in French and the selection (and variety of genres) is a lot better!

Librivox:
Like Tumblebooks, Librivox reads books to you; unlike Tumblebooks, this program focuses on books for adults, and all of the texts are recorded by volunteers from their homes, which makes the sound quality less professional. On the other hand, this means that new texts are constantly being added. (By "new," I mean "previously unrecorded." The books are limited to those in the public domain, which means nothing from the past few decades.) Librivox offers texts in just about any language you can think of, limited only by the languages that their volunteer readers around the world speak, from Catalan to Korean to Latvian to Old English to Tagalog to Urdu (click here and select a language from the drop-down menu to see what books are available in the languages of your choice). Among their choices in French, I haven't found anything appropriate for Griffin or Carl--even the fables by Jean de la Fontaine would go over their heads, at least without illustrations, and no way would I give a preschooler the original versions of Charles Perrault's fairy tales! In English, though, they have stories by Beatrix Potter, Thornton Burgess, Aesop, and Mother Goose, plus The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (and with 10,000+ texts in English, many more are bound to be appropriate for kids).

Reading A-Z:
I found this one almost four years ago, before I started working as a reading enrichment program coordinator at the library; I'll be exploring it more thoroughly now to steal (er, adapt) some of their ideas for my Reading Buddies. As I stated in my original post, you must purchase a subscription ($85/year for one classroom) to access all of their materials, but they also offer a generous number of free samples. You print out the black-line books and staple them together (then the kids can color them themselves). As the site is designed for teachers of English, the vast majority of their books are in English, but they also have a selection in French and in Spanish (both translations of their original books in English). The subheading on the home page of this site claims "Everything You Need to Teach Reading," and I pretty much believe them--everything from phonics to poetry to readers' theatre to worksheets to lesson plans to assessments is here.

Enchanted Learning:
Like Reading A-Z, this subscription-based site markets itself to teachers with printable books and worksheets. Its offerings are much more limited when it comes to books, but the site provides more printable activities, games, and worksheets. You can also access all of their materials without subscribing ($20/year) if you're willing to look at ads and not have the prettiest versions of the pages when you print them. While Reading A-Z seems very educational, the Enchanted Learning stuff strikes me as more fun. Check out their materials, including short printable books, about Africa and Kwanzaa, in American Sign Language, about Canada, about China and the Chinese New Year, in Spanish and about Cinco de Mayo and Dia de los Muertos, in French, in Swedish, in Dutch, in German, in Hebrew and about Hanukkah, in Italian, about Japan and Japanese crafts, in Portuguese, in Russian, and about geography in general. Enchanted Learning's materials in English are divided into categories on the home page.

So now it's your turn!  What do you think about sites like these?  Do you prefer the interactive ones or the simpler text-based sites?  Which are your favorites (and least favorites) (and why)?  What others do you recommend?

Note: Do check out the comments, where readers have recommended many more worthy sites in the past two three years!

updated profile: Liza R's son learning English and Hebrew in Israel

Remember Liza Rosenberg, whose son is growing up in Israel with English and Hebrew and even a little Farsi and Spanish? I quoted extensively from her blog, Something Something, last month (click here to read more about her son's progress and here to read about her anxiety about his learning English in school). As a follow-up to that post, she answered the Bringing up Baby Bilingual questionnaire. Here are her answers to my burning questions!

What is your language background and history? I grew up in the US, speaking English and learning Hebrew and Spanish (as well as one relatively wasted year of Latin to help with the SATs!) in school.

What languages are you exposing your son to, and how? My husband (who moved to Israel at age 3 from Iran) and I speak to our son mainly in English, but are teaching him words in Spanish and Farsi, in addition to the Hebrew he picks up in daily life.

Why do you want your son to learn a second language? The English is very important, not only because it will be his sole language of communication with our family and friends in the US, but also because it will open the door to all sorts of educational and professional opportunities as he gets older. We are teaching him words in Farsi because it's important to us that he will have awareness of his Persian ancestry as well as his American ancestry. The few words that he's learning in Spanish probably won't get him very far, but I love the idea of exposing him to as many languages as possible.

How well does your son understand and speak the second language? What does he think about it? He's only 2 ½, so we're still working on language development. He completely understands everything we tell him in English, though these days, more often than not, he responds in Hebrew. He already seems to understand that there are two distinct languages, and if he says a word in one language, I can ask him how to say the same word in the other language and he does it without a problem. When he was a bit younger, he spoke more English than Hebrew, but when speaking with native Hebrew speakers, if he sensed that they didn't understand what he'd said in English, he would often switch to Hebrew. The last time we were in the US (during the summer), he suddenly had somewhat of a language development "explosion", and it happened in English. He's since caught up in Hebrew, and I'm wondering what will happen the next time we go to the US, probably in a few months' time.

How have you been able to expose your son to the culture(s) where the second language is spoken? We make annual visits to the US, and his grandparents visit us once a year in Israel. Most of his books are in English, as are his videos and DVDs (though some are in British English). He enjoys the English-language children's shows on BBC as well. As he gets older, it will be easier to expose him to American culture.

What challenges have occurred as you teach your child a second language? At this stage, there haven't really been any, other than that I find it frustrating when well-meaning Israelis whose English is far from perfect want to talk to my son in English, and I worry about the mistakes that he might pick up. I also try to correct his accent and pronunciation so that they will be more American (though British would be fun too!). I also had personal issues when he started calling me "Eema" (Hebrew for "Mommy") instead of "Mommy", and originally tried to fight it. I've since had a change of heart and decided to go with the flow, and now he calls me both.

What resources have been most useful to you? My friends in similar situations, different websites and email lists. For the most part, though, I just sort of go with my gut instincts, and it hasn't failed me yet.

What do you think parents, caretakers, teachers, and/or researchers need to know about teaching a second language to children? Consistency is key. I'm fluent in both languages, and sometimes I find myself having to actively concentrate on not slipping into Hebrew with my son. Often, when he says something in Hebrew, I manage to slip it back into the chatter in English. I do whatever I can to provide him with the greatest exposure to native English, whether it be via television, videos, books, etc. I'm hoping to set up a local play group for native English-speaking children, but I just haven't had the time to do so yet. I want the speaking of English to come naturally to him, and for him to see it as something normal, as opposed to a chore. I don't want to reach a stage where I'm fighting with him about it to a point where he opts for Hebrew solely to rebel, as I've seen in some families.

Answer your own question now--what did I not ask about that you want to comment on? The gift of bi/multilingualism! It's one of the greatest gifts that a parent can give their children on so many different levels. Unless a child has specific learning issues that would make it difficult to deal with more than one language, if parents have an opportunity to offer their children more than one native language, they should do it! I was speaking with a native Spanish speaker recently who was here in Israel visiting family. Her sister made sure that her children speak Spanish as well as Hebrew, and as a result, my friend has a wonderful relationship with her nephews. On the other hand, her brother chose not to speak Spanish with his children, and my friend has almost no relationship with her nieces because they have no common language, and that is sad for everyone involved. Being fluent/comfortable in more than one language can only be a bonus.

Thanks again, Liza! Readers, does what Liza says resonate with any of you? Have you had similar ideas or experiences or rationale?

Profile: Liza R's son learning English and Hebrew in Israel

Liza Rosenberg from the US, a self-described “technical writer, blogger, freelancer and mommy,” blogs about her life in Israel at Something Something and at Brio, “Parenting in a Global World.” She and her husband are raising their son multilingually and muticulturally—with English as the home language and Hebrew as the outside majority language, plus some Farsi—and she graciously agreed to share some of her stories and observations. These passages are taken from two of her recent posts discussing her son’s language acquisition. Thanks, Liza!

“As we raise our son, [we’re] trying to instill in him knowledge of his family's past. Thanks to his parents, he is a Persian-American Israeli…. We are speaking to him only in English so that he will feel equally comfortable in both English and Hebrew, and our ‘work’ is paying off for us so far, as even though Hebrew has begun creeping into his growing vocabulary, English is his primary language.

“When our son was born….I came across the words of supposed experts, who claimed that it was essential that each parent speak to the child only in his or her respective language, and I assumed that this would be the route we'd be taking as well. My husband's English is quite good, and I liked the idea that we would both speak to our child in English, but felt that I would be asking a lot by requesting that my husband speak to our son in a language that was not naturally his own. I was pleasantly surprised, therefore, when he suggested that we both use English, believing that it would help to ensure that our son felt equally comfortable in both languages, that he would be totally bilingual. Occasionally, we are both guilty of lapsing into Hebrew when speaking to our son, but for the most part, we address him in English. We read to him primarily in English, teach him children's songs in English, and encourage him to choose videos and television shows in English. He loves Dora the Explorer, watching videos of the American version that switches between English and Spanish as well as the more relevant Israeli version, which switches between Hebrew and English and shows him that it is natural to speak in both languages.

“On the other end of the spectrum, however, we want him to know that he is also Persian, and to this end, we have taught him (so far) how to count to ten in Farsi (which he does in both English and Hebrew as well). We are slowly introducing a few other words in Farsi, as we feel that it's important for him to understand and be proud of his Iranian roots. He already loves rice, and I'm hoping that one of these days he will enjoy the only Persian dish I know how to make - Ghormeh Sabzi. We will pass on the stories told to us by my husband's parents and uncles about life in Iran when things were good, introduce him to Persian food (excellent, and highly recommended!), and hopefully do our best to make him familiar with the language.

“In the meantime, we'll concentrate on the counting. After only a week or so, he's already quite good. One of us will throw the first number at him – ‘yek.’ He responds with ‘doe’ (two). Somebody throws in ‘she’ (three), and we continue this way, alternating up to ten. Ten is ‘dah,’ which the little one always follows up with a rousing, cheerful, ‘haydad!’, which means ‘hurray!’ in Hebrew. And he can almost say ‘sabzi,’ even though he refuses to eat it, so we are making some progress….

“When he does decide to talk, we never know what language will come out of his mouth. Earlier on, his primary language was English. As he grows older, however, more and more Hebrew creeps into his daily chitchat. He understands perfectly when addressed in English, but will often respond in a baffling combination of the two languages, at times using English sentence structure and Hebrew words. Eventually, his language issues will sort themselves out, and it is fascinating to watch our son develop his language skills. For the time being, however, it can sometimes be rather challenging as we translate his speeches into whatever language happens to be required by his audience.

“This was often the case while my parents were visiting [from the US], and as a result, we now find ourselves actively working on the issue of bilingualism, trying to make him realize that he speaks and understands two distinct languages, and starting to teach him to distinguish between the two. We have introduced the concept of ‘English,’ and when he says something in Hebrew, we will often ask him what the word would be in ‘English.’ So far, it seems to be working. On the flip side, when we ask him in English to say something to someone else (‘please,’ ‘thank you,’ and so on), if the other person is Israeli, he will carry out the request by translating and responding in Hebrew. Sometimes, when he says something in English and receives no response, he switches to Hebrew, so clearly, he seems to realize that there are two sets of words. If we play our cards right, we'll have one fabulously multi-cultural kid on our hands. Haydad!

“Of course, it's still early days yet, but so far, our ‘hard work’ seems to be paying off. He may be an Israeli little boy, but his immersion into the English language can only work to his benefit, allowing him to connect with friends and family across the ocean and enabling him to be a citizen of the world."