Little Brother and I have been having fun recently reading nursery rhymes in Spanish and English, from ¡Pío Peep!, a delightful book of rhymes from Spain and Latin American countries, selected by Alma Flor Ada and F. Isabel Campoy (Harper Collins, 2003). In their introduction they say that they chose rhymes that resonated from their own childhoods, and also ones that were clear favorites with “the numerous children – Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, and Central American – with whom we have worked.” The rhymes are accompanied by an English Adaptation by Alice Schertle, who provides the key for these rhymes to be enjoyed as nursery rhymes by English-speakers as well, in all their rhythmic, chantable, sometimes nonsensical, sometimes dreamlike glory.
Here’s a taster: “El Barquito” uses repetition of whole phrases to create its narrative tension; the English also repeats but only single words:
There was, was, was
a little boat, boat, boat,
who never, never, never
learned to float, float, float.
[...]
And if this silly story doesn’t
sink, sink, sink,
we’ll have to tell it one more time,
I think, think, think.
Little Brother loves the potential for being very annoying, repeating the rhyme over and over and over; and I love the nonsensical inversion at the end, of the story rather than the boat not sinking. The rhythm is so snappy, I think it’s going to be lurking at the back of my mind for a while to come, even without Little Brother’s assistance!
As in all nursery rhymes across cultures, this selection includes the themes of nature and family; there are short, clapping rhymes, counting rhymes and lullabies; and they encompass everyday routines in a child’s life, and flights of imagination. Add to all this Viví Escrivá’s captivating illustrations and you really do have one special book.
This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Irene Latham over at Live. Love. Explore! Head on over.
And P.S. Don’t forget to take a look at our 1,000th post, with the chance of winning a Spirit of PaperTigers 2010 book set. Deadline for entries is Wednesday 19th January…
Whenever I visit Jama’s Alphabet Soup, I feel hungry - and today is no exception! She’s hosting today’s Poetry Friday with a bowl full of peaches, as well as a poem to go with them, to feed the soul!
The poem I’ve chosen today is about food too - but it’s an elephant doing the eating and I’m not sure that I would exactly want to join in with his feast… Elephants are, however, my absolute favorite animal and I can’t resist sharing this one with you today:
Little Elephant Swaying
Little elephant swaying.
Growing up breathing fresh air
And eating fresh branches.
Little elephant,
Swaying this way and that,
Eating the heart of the kia plant.
It’s a nursery rhyme from India, translated from Hindi, and is included in Floella Benjamin’s lovely anthology Skip Across the Ocean: Nursery Rhymes from Across the World, richly illustrated by Sheila Moxley (Frances Lincoln, 2007/8). The rhymes really do come from all over the world - and many of them are given in their original langauge too, which makes this a particularly intriguing book for young children, especially as, being nursery rhymes, there’s plenty of onomatopoeia to play with. The rhymes are divided into four sections: Lullabies, Action Rhymes, Nature and Lucky Dip. In her introduction, Floella says:
“Rhymes are children’s first introduction to rhythm, poetry, music and the world around them. [...] They explore feelings and help children to develop important social skills while passing on cultural values and traditions to the next generation.”
By dipping into so many different cultures, this great book broadens the horizons of young children, and gives them the opportunity to have great fun with sounds and rhythms in other languages. What a feast!
In a world where language conveys powerful messages about attitudes and values, what better moment to introduce its many “looks and sounds” than the nursery years? My Village: Rhymes from Around the World (Gecko Press, 2008), collected by New Zealander Danielle Wright and illustrated by British artist Mique Moriuchi, does exactly that: it brings together, in a beautiful multilingual volume, an array of nursery rhymes that introduces children to the languages and cultures of 22 countries. In addition, My Village perfectly communicates the potential rhymes have of becoming “companions for life”—something alluded to by Children’s Poet Laureate Michael Rosen in his beautiful introduction to the book.
Wright’s website, It’s a Small World, offers more about the core idea behind the book. “I wanted a way to introduce different cultures to children right from the nursery“, she says. “Imagine life without world music or ethnic food - that’s what a child’s reading life would be like without international kid’s books and poems… In our grandparents generation eating ethnic food was not commonplace; now their great grandchildren live with many cultural influences outside their own and sometimes many cultural influences inside the one home. Feeding a child rich language from other cultures is a good way to help him/her grow up culturally sensitive.” The website also includes a page on the history of nursery rhymes and a map of endangered languages which points to a scary fact: within the space of a few generations more than half of the 7,000 languages currently spoken in the world may disappear, “consigning whole cultural perspectives and histories to silence.”
Ethnographer Wade Davis has a beautiful definition of language, that gives us much to think about:
Language is not just a body of vocabulary or a set of grammatical rules – language is a flash of the human spirit. It’s the vehicle through which the soul of each particular culture comes into the material world. Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind, a watershed of thought and an ecosystem of spiritual possibilities.
Published in 2008, UNESCO’s International Year of Languages, My Village: Rhymes from Around the World is a commendable effort to introduce children to the joys of rhymes and to our world’s rich—and fragile— tapestry of languages. Here’s to hoping all our 7,000 languages will continue to exist for millenia to come.
