¿Habla Español?

bilingual

In a multicultural world, bilingual books serve as great tools for learning a second language, making it more accessible to readers of two languages.

Here in the Philippines, almost all picture books are bilingual, with English and Filipino translations side by side, as young readers learn in both languages.

Last December, I was organizing my bookshelf when I uncovered a set of bilingual fairy tales in Spanish and English. I mooched them last year and stashed them on a back shelf, almost forgotten: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs / Blancanieves by Miquel Desclot, Ignasi Blanch; Jack and the Beanstalk / Juan y los frijoles mágicos by Francesc Bofill, Arnal Ballester, Alis Alejandro; Aladdin and the Magic Lamp/Aladino y la lámpara maravillosa by Josep Vallverdú, Pep Montserrat, and The Three Little Pigs / Los Tres Cerditos by Mercè Escardó i Bas, Pere Joan.

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Connecting Flights

connectflight spread temp copyLast month I attended the launch of Anvil Publishing’s new book, Connecting Flights: Filipinos Write from Elsewhere edited by journalist and author Ruel S. De Vera.  I reviewed it for a travel magazine together with some other travel-related books — I’ll have to check if the issue is out already.

Connecting Flights is a companion to Writing Home: 19 Writers Remember Their Hometowns, also by De Vera. It’s a collection of poems, essays, and fiction by 20 contributors, including Dean Francis Alfar, Jose Dalisay Jr., Lourd De Veyra, Karla P. Delgado, Rosario A. Garcellano, Ramil Digal Gulle, Christina Pantoja-Hidalgo, Alya B. Honasan, Marne L. Kilates, Angelo R. Lacuesta, Ambeth R. Ocampo, Charlson Ong, Manuel L. Quezon III, D.M. Reyes, Sev Sarmenta, Alice M. Sun-Cua, Yvette Tan, Joel M. Toledo, Alfred A. Yuson, and Jessica Zafra.

“These dizzying days, we constantly move from home to in-between places before landing somewhere else,”  De Vera notes in his introduction. “But I believe that we Filipinos bring our true selves along with us on every leg of every journey. We leave with it — and we treasure it enough to take it home, changed perhaps, but always overjoyed to have returned.”

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I heart Doraemon!

doraemon

Last month, I decided to reread my Doraemon comics, both for some stress relief and in preparation for meeting the cute and cuddly robo-cat himself!

I first watched Doraemon on local tv (dubbed in Filipino), back in high school, because it was shown around the time I got home, before the local news. My brother was crazy about the cartoons so I couldn’t switch channels, but before long, I was hooked on Doraemon as well.

I read my cousin Chickoy’s copy of the comics (that he got in Bangkok) some years back, but I was eventually able to get some volumes through a BookMoocher friend in Japan, wired_lain.

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A few more Christmas reads

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Because my plan to catch up with my blogging backlog over the holidays was an epic fail (so little time, so much to do!) , I will spend part of January in an attempt to mow it down to zero, so I can start fresh for 2010.

I am posting a list of the backlog in a subsequent entry (still working through the stacks), but I’m posting a few more of the Christmas reads, otherwise it’ll take me another year before I can post them again.

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World War II Challenge Wrap-Up

soldiers

I successfully finished the War through the Generations World War II reading challenge this December, but I haven’t been able to blog properly in the last ten days or so, with the holiday rush. Hopefully this entry still makes it.

For 2009, I’ve read:

1) The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

2) Number the Stars by Lois Lowry

3) Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli

4) Night by Elie Wiesel

5) Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

6) Maus by Art Spiegelman

This month, I finished Stones in Water by Donna Jo Napoli, and A Separate Peace by John Knowles.

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