Millie books - Los cuentos de Millie

Reading in two languages - Leyendo en dos idiomas

Bilingual Children's books

Join Millie’s Underwater Adventure – Watch the Full Story on YouTube! 🌊🛸

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I’m so excited as I worked so hard on this animation, and I’ve climbed a learning curve 🙂

Dive into an exciting ocean adventure with Millie, Mr. Raccoon, and their Martian friends, Kliff and Kloff! 🚀💎

When a magical diamond goes missing under the sea, Millie and her friends explore the ocean depths, meet amazing sea creatures 🐢🐙, and solve the mystery. Want to see what happens? Watch the full animated adventure on my YouTube channel! 🎥 There is also a Spanish version available for those bilingual kiddos! 🌟

 

Where to buy bilingual children’s books?

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It may seem obvious that we should know where to buy bilingual children’s books.  However, for some reason, sometimes it seems that bilingual books are such a niche that it’s hard to come by good books.

Here are 5 ideas on where to buy bilingual children’s books. No matter what language combination, you are sure to find something.

  1. Amazon: Needless to say, this is the number one in my list.  On Amazon, you can find bilingual books in any language combination ready to be shipped to you no matter where you are in the world.  Amazon will be your most convenient option.  Make sure to use the search engine exactly what you are looking for, and you will be able to find bilingual children’s books of any subject and for any age!  If you want to check out the books I’ve written and illustrated, you can check out my Amazon author page.
  2. Your local bookstore: If supporting your local stores aligns more with your values, you can go to your local bookstore and actually have a chat with the owner or the store person.  Depending on your area they may be able to recommend some ideas or, if you don’t live in a bilingual area, you can ask to order the book by providing the ISBN.  This will take some more research and time on your part, but it will strengthen your sense of community.
  3. Facebook groups:  Join various local Facebook groups for parents or for dual language speakers in your area.  More often than not, you will be able to connect with parents who are trying to offload their bilingual books when their children have outgrown them.  You might even get them for free. I recently gave an entire crate with baby and toddler books in English and Spanish to a friend who recently had new babies.
  4. Local events and book fairs: If you live in a multicultural city, there will be for sure events organised by different community groups.  In my case, the Mexican community organises a lot of fun events for anyone who wants to join and enjoy.  The awesome thing about these events is that you get to meet the authors in person and get the books directly from their creator! It’s much more personal and I have to say, when I’ve set up market stalls, children really smile when they find out I actually wrote the books!
  5. Social media: All social media, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and others are also search engines.  The cool thing is that if you type “Bilingual children’s books + [insert target language]” you will be able to find many independent authors and/or publisher accounts.  There are also book bloggers that have great recommendations.  Even better, once you do a few searches, the algorithm will lead you to discover many more books alternatives.  Once you find them all you have to do is go to their links and buy directly from the authors or find the book on your favorite online bookstore.

And there you have it, 5 places where to buy bilingual children’s books.  Have I missed any options? which one is your favorite?

Happy Reading!

Erika

Leyendo en voz alta: Millie y los colores perdidos

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En este video leo en voz alta mi libro “Millie y los colores perdidos” en su versión en español

Millie y el Sr. Mapache descubren que el mundo afuera se ha puesto completamente gris. Cuando encuentran un cofre misterioso y un mapa, ¡se embarcan en una aventura espectacular! ¿Podrán Millie y el Sr. Mapache encontrar los colores del mundo?

En esta lectura en voz alta, acompañamos a Millie y al Sr. Mapache en su búsqueda de los colores alrededor del mundo. En su viaje, visitan el Reino Unido, Holanda, Kenia, Brasil, México, India y Japón, donde conocen nuevos amigos y encuentran tesoros en el camino.

Encuéntralo en Amazon USA: https://amzn.to/2XKRWLb

Entrevista con My Bilingual Child Corner

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¡Hola amigos!

Hace poquito tuve la fortuna de ser entrevistada para My Bilingual Child Corner.  Es un recurso increíble en cuanto a la crianza bilingüe sobretodo si estás tratando de que tu peque aprenda inglés como lengua objetivo.

Me encantó platicar con María en esta entrevista porque hablamos sobre mi proceso creativo a la hora de escribir libro y un poco de lo que me mueve a contar e ilustrar historias para los pequeñines.

¡Espero que les guste! 🙂

Crianza Bilingüe durante la Pandemia Covid-19

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Hace poco tuve la fortuna de platicar con Minerva Ortega, creadora del blog de Reto Bilingüe acerca de cómo nos hemos tenido que adaptar para mantener la crianza bilingüe en casa durante la pandemia COVID-19.  Aquí dejo el video por si están buscando tips o simplemente si no se quieren sentir solos en este viaje!

A while ago, I had the pleasure of having a chat with Minerva Ortega, creator of the blog Reto Bilingue (in Spanish), about how we have had to adapt to keep raising our kids bilingual during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Here’s the video in case you are looking for tips or simply if you don’t want to feel alone in this journey!

Why I picked the countries that Millie visited?

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As an author, you make a lot of decisions all the time.  Some are big, like your character’s name and some are small, like what they are wearing today.  You may be wondering why I sent Millie to visit the countries she visited.   The answer to this is a big mash of a lot of things.  Some I’ve been to, some I’ve always wanted to go to, some have seen my best friends been born and some felt just right.

So, without further ado, here are some of the reasons why I picked these places:

United Kingdom

A couple of years ago, I was lucky enough to spend Christmas in London.  One day, my husband and I took some sharing bikes and went for a ride along the Thames and under so many bridges and lanes and alleys.  It was a lot of fun! Does it ever happen to you that you are in one place and you just really absorb with all your senses everything that is happening around you? And then you take a mind photo of a particular place from your point of view? Well, this happened to me here and I knew I wanted Millie go there one day.  I picked red because of how the buses pop in the greyness of the city.

 

The Netherlands

My favourite flowers are tulips, especially when they are in a field lots of them one after the other.  In 2002, I went to the Netherlands on a trip for university and I didn’t get to see any tulip fields! Sniff!  This is because most of the time I spent it at the ports and the fresh produce markets.  I did get to go to the Mexican Embassy which was a very nice highlight.  I picked orange because it’s a very Dutch colour (it’s the colour of the Dutch royal family and they use this colour in international sport).

 

 

Kenya

Kenya has been in mi bucket list since I saw The Lion King (don’t laugh at me).  I imagine one day being able to see the coolest animals of the planet in their natural habitat.  I have a friend from Kenya who helped me work out the typical way of dressing of the Masaii people that you will see in the book. In this illustration, I wanted to show the openness and the famous fiery sky. I know the greyness of the illustration doesn’t do it justice at all, but it’s part of the story.  The bird you see in the illustrations is a Little yellow flycatcher, they are cute!

 

 

Brazil

Since I was in junior high school I’ve always wanted to go to Brazil. Not only because Brazil wins a lot at the World Cup, but also because I think it’s such a happy and exuberant country.  They also speak Portuguese which to me it sounds beautiful! The background that you will see in the book is from Copacabana beach and I picked green because that’s the main colour in the Brazilian flag.

 

 

 

Mexico

Of course, I was going to include my home country in this book! And not only that, the illustration in the book shows the cathedral at my hometown Guadalajara.  This really old church is in the centre of the city and it is an iconic building with its yellow towers.  When I was growing up, there were stories of ghosts and secret tunnels!  Outside this place, it’s very common to see families walking together, kids blowing bubbles, a person selling colourful balloons and food stalls.   In this illustration, I wanted to show that blue corn actually exists. It’s even healthier than yellow or white corn.

 

India

One of my best friends here in Melbourne is from Mumbai.  I remember when I told her the idea of my books and she loved it. I can’t tell if I told her I wanted to put India or if she told me.  At this point, I had decided to include a local kid in each country.  My friend helped me a lot in getting the Marathi girl right.  You’ll see her sari is draped like pants because women from this region worked in the fields and they needed to move more freely. The image you see in the book shows the Gateway of Mumbai and the Taj Hotel.  They are both very famous buildings in the city of Mumbai.  I matched this colour in this part of the story because India has been a very large producer of Indigo dye (as you can imagine by the name).  A lot rainbow depictions exclude indigo from the colours of the rainbow because it can be indistinguishable from blue and violet.  Apparently, when Isaac Newton discovered the colours of the rainbow, tried to match the number of colours of the rainbow with the seven musical notes and the seven days of the week.  So until I hear anything official, indigo will stay.

Japan

This country has also always been on my bucket list.  Maybe it’s all the anime I watched as a little girl, the orderly culture and the way this country can be so technologically advanced and traditional at the same time.  Maybe I just want to go and eat sushi and ramen! I really struggled to come up with an item for Millie to get from Japan.  In my head, she met a little friend who gave her a violet kimono, a very valuable present!  The illustration shows the Hōzōmon gate which is the entrance to the Sensō-ji Temple in Tokio.

 

 

So, there you have it! I hope you enjoyed finding out a little bit about why I picked the countries that I picked.  They all have a little something special and I’m sure that Millie will visit one or more of them in her new adventures!  If you want to get the book, it{s available on Amazon here.

Happy reading!

Erika

5 things I learned when I wrote Millie and the lost colours

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When writing “Millie and the lost colours” learned a few things that may be a bit trivial but I think they are interesting.  Here they are!

1. It’s so hard to decide on accents and spellings – Writing a bilingual book is hard enough but deciding whether to use American or British (and Aussie) spelling was even harder! I had managed to sort of avoid some of the spelling that gave away one or the other but in this book even the title had a word with a different spelling. I have to say, that considering that Millie is a Mexican Australian little girl, she would have an Australian accent and would even call it soccer instead of football.  True story!

2. There’s more to grey than meets the eye – Before starting with the digital illustrations for Millie and the lost colours, I enrolled in a children’s book illustration course. I learned a lot of the basics and techniques that I will be using in future books, but what blew mi mind was that the colour grey can have many different undertones.  Maybe I knew it subconsciously, but I was not aware of this.  So, look at the illustrations and you’ll see that there is an undertone colour waiting to come out.  To illustrate it this way, it took me a lot longer but I think it was worth it!

3. There are actually more than 7 colours of the rainbow – The seven colours of the rainbow we know and love are there because those are the only ones that we can see. It seems there are about 1 million colours in a rainbow, but they are not visible to our eyes. For more quirky facts about rainbows here’s an article of one of my favourite podcasts, Stuff you should know.

 

4. The world is full of amazing architecture and special places – In this book, I made a bigger effort to have more detailed backgrounds and of course to do justice to the place in each illustration. I got to appreciate more the architecture of all these different places and I’m so excited to show them to you.

 

5. There may be more than one story in this book –

I originally was going to keep just Millie and Mr. Raccoon travelling around the world. However, when I got to Japan, ‘something’ was missing.  I then drew a little girl in a kimono and I knew I had to add other little kids in the story.  The text won’t say anything about them because a children’s book needs to be relatively short and I also needed to keep space for the Spanish.  However, your child can use their amazing imagination to come up with ideas on how they are helping Millie in her quest.

 

5. There’s no order of adjectives in Spanish – Up to this point, I have been writing all my books first in Spanish and then translating them to English. I wrote the very first draft of this book in English in an author workshop at my local library.  While I tend to easily translate on the go, I found it so hard to make the Spanish translation sound nice . In Spanish, we don’t really follow any patterns to describe something like we do in English.

And there you have it! These are the five things I learned while writing “Millie and the lost colours”.  If you want to get the book you can find it here.

Happy Reading!

Erika

Reading aloud: Millie goes to the ocean

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Hello! Here’s the read-aloud of “Millie goes to the ocean”, this is the English version and I hope you and your kids enjoy it!

Happy Reading!

What are bilingual books?

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The world is getting smaller, the number of bilingual families is growing and with this, there is a need and a desire to teach both languages to children.  There are a few strategies to raise bilingual children, one of the most popular one is OPOL (One Parent One Language) in which each parent (or carer) speaks to the child exclusively in one language.  For example, a bilingual family where dad speaks to the child only in English and mum speaks only in Spanish.

Bilingual books can be a good resource for parents, teachers or carers to teach a target language.  But, what are bilingual books? As you can imagine, bilingual books are books that have the same story in two different languages.  The text is generally split in each language as the objective for children is to read without mixing languages.  This way, for example, the carer that always talks to the child in English, will read the story in English, and the carer that talks in Spanish, will read the story in Spanish.  Nowadays, there is more demand for bilingual books in different languages, and while I focus on bilingual books for children in English and Spanish, there are bilingual books in many different combinations.  In fact, my local library has books in English-Greek, English-Mandarin, English-Italian and many more.  This is because those are the books that the international communities in my city are looking for.

Now that I told you about bilingual books, I also need to tell you what bilingual books are NOT.  Bilingual books are NOT books to learn languages or grammar, Bilingual books are NOT books that mix language and they are NOT books that are translated too literally.

 

How do I read a bilingual children’s book?

It’s very important to be aware that if you are the parent or carer that always speaks in English, your role will be to always read the story in English.  On the other hand, if you are the carer that always speaks Spanish, then you will read in Spanish.  It’s also useful to point at the illustrations, objects and characters.  Ask your child questions about what will happen next.  Bilingual books are not a magic pill that will make your child speak another language overnight, however, they are a powerful tool, that combined with daily conversation, music and lots of patience, will help you raise bilingual children.

What do you think?  I hope I piqued your interest to learn more about bilingual books and that you can find books that can entertain your kids while you give them the gift of speaking another language.

Happy Reading!