A new bilingual book is coming soon & I would love your input!
 Hi friends,It’s summertime in Europe, and we’ve been lucky enough to be able to travel to Greece, my home country. We started with a holiday in Crete, my father’s homeland and the kids were very excited to find out that they have many older relatives and one aunt in particular who’s 93, very chatty, healthy, and strong :). We spent time with my father’s twin sister and the kids got to see the garden and how watermelons, cucumbers, aubergines, tomatoes, and lots of other fruit and vegetables grow. In moments like this, I am reminded of how important it is to pass on our languages to our children. The experiences, the bonding with people and places, are so much deeper, complete when they can effectively communicate and feel the language at an emotional level. Now we’re in my parents’ country house in mainland Greece, but still close to the sea, and I have almost completed my new children’s book titled “Nelly’s Box“. This book will be the 3rd one in the bilingual book series and it will be published this month. It’s about a child who’s now attending a foreign language class, and this language also happens to be one of her home languages. The amazing illustrations are by the artist Eve Farb. The first bilingual editions will also be published during July. The story has been written while having in mind the needs of bilingual children, their families, and teachers + to be used for language lessons such as practicing conjugating verbs using the present tense, vocabulary, etc carefully weaved in a storytelling format. For the people who have just recently subscribed to my blog and newsletter, I was initially educated as a foreign language teacher (Bachelor’s degree in French Language and Literature/Philology from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Certificate of Proficiency in English by the University of Cambridge), and later on, I got an MSc degree in Global Marketing from the University of Cambridge. I speak Greek (native), English, French, and some basic Norwegian. I’m in an ethnically, culturally, and linguistically mixed marriage, raising trilingual children. We’re creating a book together once more! -> I shared this version of the story in my FB readers’ group (there have been some small edits since that post). “Spanish” will be replaced with “Greek”, “French”, “Italian”, “German”, etc, depending on the target language per bilingual edition. I’d love your feedback and suggestions for changes via email if any. -> There’s also a poll going on in the group, asking for your input, so that I can prioritize translations based on your preferred language(s). If you’re not in the FB group, you can also let me know via email – just hit “reply”. The top choices right now are Italian, Spanish, French, Greek, Dutch, and German. As always, you will be able to download the eBook editions for free upon launch. -> I will feature children’s boxes in the last pages of my new book “Nelly’s Box” (like I did in “Cousins Forever” with our children’s paintings and favorite words). Some of you have sent me photos of boxes with some of your kid(s)’ favorite things – thank you so much 🙂. If you haven’t done that yet, and you’d like your child’s box to be included, please send me a photo (high resolution) at liza@maltamum.com by Friday the 15th of July! Here’s what I have so far.  An amazing new course for parents raising bilingual children Ute Limacher-Riebold Ph.D., Language Consultant & Intercultural Communication Expert, and also selected researcher and contributor at PEaCH – EU Project, launched her very own Ute’s International Lounge Academy with courses for parents raising bilingual children and multilingual children! I attended “E.N.J.O.Y. Raising Children with Multiple Languages for parents of 0 to 4 year old children” and this is the review I posted on my blog. PS. Here’s a photo from our holiday in Crete where I got to meet Early Childhood Educator and Author Christina Konstantoudaki, owner of the Paper Kittens Online Bookstore, who imports and sells exclusively my books in Greece. We met online several years ago, and we have been exchanging ideas and manuscripts ever since. It was very special meeting her in person ❤. Fun fact, she introduced me to a friend who’s married to a local guy, who as luck would have it, turned out to be a distant relative and one of my father’s nephews :).  |
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