WHERE ARE YOU GOING?
TO SEE MY FRIEND!
WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED BY: ERIC CARLE & KAZUO IWAMURA
Summary: Where Are You Going? To See My Friend is a repetitive, rhythmic tale of animals traveling to meet a friend. It begins with a dog traveling. A cat asks the dog where he is going and he responds that he is going to see his friend, who is a good singer. The cat says it can sing too and proceeds to meow. The cat joins the dog in his travels. Each animal they encounter follows the same format until they reach the dog's friend, a human. Together they all sing and dance.
Review: This is an incredibly thoughtful picture book that uses both English and Japanese together beautifully. In traditional Japanese print, characters are read in vertical columns from top to bottom, with columns being read right to left. Because of the right-to-left directionality, Japanese books begin where English readers may consider the back of the book and progress by flipping pages left to right. Because of the drastically different concepts of print in the two languages, creating a bilingual book poses challenges. Rather than having translated text written beside or underneath one language, Carle and Iwamura write the book in two halves. Starting from the left are illustrations and text by Eric Carle. Starting from the other end of the book are illustrations and text by Kazuo Iwamura telling the same story in Japanese. The two meet in the middle of the book in a beautiful song together about friendship.
I am incredibly impressed with the way the structure of the book for the most part equally presents both languages. Neither language is dominant in the book and neither are the illustrations. Both halves of the book contain illustrations in very different style, making each animal look very different. The English half of the book ends with a Caucasian boy as the "friend" they were meeting up with and the Japanese half of the book ends with a Japanese girl as the "friend." The publishers, on the other hand have made English a bit more biased by placing award stickers and the legal information in the front of the English side of the book. However, the text and illustrations themselves are free from bias.
I think this is an excellent book for Japanese ELLs. They can hear it in English at school and in Japanese at home. It's a great way for them to practice English while also being scaffolded by the Japanese language in the book. They are on separate sides of the book so students must read one or the other rather than solely relying on the more comfortable language. I also think this would be an incredible book to use when teaching concepts of print. While most students pick up on this naturally, some ELL students may be confused about this at first. Regardless of how quickly students catch on, this book would be a great way to show that there is not one right way to read a book, but many different ways depending on the language. Each language is valuable and has a valuable set of rules that should be respected.
For more information, check out the author/illustrator page for this book below:
Review: This is an incredibly thoughtful picture book that uses both English and Japanese together beautifully. In traditional Japanese print, characters are read in vertical columns from top to bottom, with columns being read right to left. Because of the right-to-left directionality, Japanese books begin where English readers may consider the back of the book and progress by flipping pages left to right. Because of the drastically different concepts of print in the two languages, creating a bilingual book poses challenges. Rather than having translated text written beside or underneath one language, Carle and Iwamura write the book in two halves. Starting from the left are illustrations and text by Eric Carle. Starting from the other end of the book are illustrations and text by Kazuo Iwamura telling the same story in Japanese. The two meet in the middle of the book in a beautiful song together about friendship.
I am incredibly impressed with the way the structure of the book for the most part equally presents both languages. Neither language is dominant in the book and neither are the illustrations. Both halves of the book contain illustrations in very different style, making each animal look very different. The English half of the book ends with a Caucasian boy as the "friend" they were meeting up with and the Japanese half of the book ends with a Japanese girl as the "friend." The publishers, on the other hand have made English a bit more biased by placing award stickers and the legal information in the front of the English side of the book. However, the text and illustrations themselves are free from bias.
I think this is an excellent book for Japanese ELLs. They can hear it in English at school and in Japanese at home. It's a great way for them to practice English while also being scaffolded by the Japanese language in the book. They are on separate sides of the book so students must read one or the other rather than solely relying on the more comfortable language. I also think this would be an incredible book to use when teaching concepts of print. While most students pick up on this naturally, some ELL students may be confused about this at first. Regardless of how quickly students catch on, this book would be a great way to show that there is not one right way to read a book, but many different ways depending on the language. Each language is valuable and has a valuable set of rules that should be respected.
For more information, check out the author/illustrator page for this book below: