Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?
Written by: Bill Martin, Jr.
Illustrated by: Eric Carle
Summary: This book does not have much of a plot, but rather it presents animal after animal of various colors. The purpose of this classic picture book is to introduce children to color and the association of meaning with pictures and words. This edition features a brown bear, red bird, yellow duck, blue horse, green frog, purple cat, white dog, black sheep, goldfish, monkey, and children.
Review: I included this book because it resembles most of the bilingual books I found at the local library. It is a popular English book that was later translated. This can sometimes be problematic in the way the language functions in the book. Often English is much more dominant over the second language in these books and they are not contextualized at all.
In this specific edition of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? the languages are distributed evenly on the pages. Both the English and Mandarin text is the same size and appears in a different position each page, not favoring either. The title page of the book frames the Mandarin title in color with the English title below, unframed which I found surprising. In this way it almost seems as though the Mandarin is favored. However, only the title is translated to Mandarin. The author and illustrator information only appear in English. The back cover of the book is entirely void of Mandarin - the summary and additional information presenting itself in English only, unfortunately.
I think this book would have benefited greatly by including animals traditionally found in Chinese culture such as a panda, tiger, dragon, phoenix, etc., although all of the animals in the book are also present or otherwise known in China. Overall I think it is a decent book, however, it may not be of much use in the classroom. One idea, however, is to use it in a foreign language class or Chinese immersion class where students are first learning their colors in Chinese.
Review: I included this book because it resembles most of the bilingual books I found at the local library. It is a popular English book that was later translated. This can sometimes be problematic in the way the language functions in the book. Often English is much more dominant over the second language in these books and they are not contextualized at all.
In this specific edition of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? the languages are distributed evenly on the pages. Both the English and Mandarin text is the same size and appears in a different position each page, not favoring either. The title page of the book frames the Mandarin title in color with the English title below, unframed which I found surprising. In this way it almost seems as though the Mandarin is favored. However, only the title is translated to Mandarin. The author and illustrator information only appear in English. The back cover of the book is entirely void of Mandarin - the summary and additional information presenting itself in English only, unfortunately.
I think this book would have benefited greatly by including animals traditionally found in Chinese culture such as a panda, tiger, dragon, phoenix, etc., although all of the animals in the book are also present or otherwise known in China. Overall I think it is a decent book, however, it may not be of much use in the classroom. One idea, however, is to use it in a foreign language class or Chinese immersion class where students are first learning their colors in Chinese.