About me

Hi,

I’m Elisavet Arkolaki, and it’s great connecting with you! I’m a multilingual mom raising two beautiful multilingual and ethnically mixed children. I’m also a children’s book author, mainly writing and publishing bilingual books. I have lived in six countries, and my home now, most of the time, is in Norway.

My husband and I are passionate about traveling; inspired by global learning, we raise our children between countries, cultures, and languages. I write to build cultural understanding and sensitivity in young children while they are still eager to learn and to entertain, help, and support them in their bilingual journey. The bilingual books I publish are ideal for early readers: white backgrounds (except books for a younger audience where the background has color), large and easy-to-read fonts, the image on one page and the text on the other, modern themes relevant to bilingual children, bilingual main characters and families that speak more than one language, etc. These books are available in 50+ languages with progressively longer stories from one book to the other. More languages and editions can be added depending on demand.

I have an academic background in foreign language teaching, translation, and marketing. I graduated from the University of Liverpool with a degree in Global Marketing (MSc), the University of Athens (EKΠΑ) with a degree in French Philology/Language and Literature (BA), and I was awarded a certificate of proficiency in English from the University of Cambridge. I speak four languages at different levels of fluency. I’ve worked for many years with translations, marketing, project management, content writing, and writing, in general, in various forms.

“A Sea of Stars”, “Where am I from?”, “Cousins Forever,” “Happiness Street,” “Nelly’s Box,” and “Summer with Grandpa” are the titles of my bilingual books, and as of right now, close to 65,000 books and eBooks are in the hands of readers (updated November 2024, 15,000+ eBooks have been offered and downloaded for free). You can find them in all Amazon stores, Barnes & Noble, and many more. My books are also available in many public libraries worldwide, and you can also request that your local library purchase them. For example, click here to check out my Spanish-English bilingual books, French-English bilingual books, and Italian-English bilingual books.

I’m proud that I’ve been a volunteer and an ambassador of PEaCH, an Erasmus+ (EU) funded project to support European families raising bilingual and multilingual children. PEaCH did that in the form of a handbook for parents, a handbook for educators, informative videos, and an online collection of ready-to-use materials in the 24 official EU languages. Moreover, read-aloud videos of some of my stories can be watched on PEaCH bilingualfamily.eu YouTube channel here. I collaborated with other ambassadors and readers to create read-aloud videos of “Cousins Forever,” “Happiness Street,” and “Nelly’s Box” in many languages for the public to access for free (Arabic, Dutch, English, Estonian, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese of Portugal, Portuguese of Brazil, Spanish, Swedish).

To find fun activities related to my books subscribe to my newsletter, join my private FB group Elisavet Arkolaki’s Behind the Book Club, or click here!

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More info about my books

Cousins Forever was included as a recommendation at twu.edu and World of Words. Where am I from? is used with second graders, and the BabyLab from the University of Plymouth (UK) uses my books with various age groups of students in their different language schools, i.e., French and Romanian.

Malta’s National Literacy Agency and Malta Libraries have supported my work since the publication of my first book, together with the Vestfold libraries in Norway. Four of my titles were published in Maltese in collaboration with Malta’s National Literacy Agency; my books are available at their literacy resources centers and school libraries and are used by teachers teaching multilingual learners in elementary schools.

The Multilingual Library (DFB), a service provided by the National Library of Norway in Oslo, Norway, has also made my books available in five languages combined with English across Norwegian libraries. DFB’s role is to support Norwegian libraries in providing library services to a multilingual and multicultural population.

Bilingual children’s books, titles, target age group, and languages:
A Sea of Stars (1+) 25+ languages, girl edition
A Sea of Stars (1+) 25+ languages, boy edition
Where am I from? (3+) 35+ languages
Happiness Street (4+) 45+ languages
Cousins Forever (4+) 50+ languages
Nelly’s Box (5+) 35+ languages
Summer with Grandpa (5-6+) 35+ languages

Non-fiction books
How to Raise Confident Multicultural Children

A short love story for adults in a photo book format
Together They Blossomed
(It’s also available in bilingual editions in EN-FR, EN-ES, EN-IT, and EN-GR).