If Curious George Could Speak: Émigré Children's Authors and and the Making of Postwar American Monolingualism
This book, which I am writing for a broad audience, provides a rationale for Oce Lost in Berlin. On its pages, I ask when, how, and why American children's literature has become so monolingual. Why is it that even the most brilliant - and most polyglot - classics, many of them émigré writers who delighted in the foreignness of their characters, rarely let these characters speak anything other than English? Margaret and H.A. Rey, for example, maintained correspondence of Babel-like proportions; and yet their Curious George stayed mum all along. Ludwig Bemelmans had a way with words in French and German; and yet his Madeline remained stubbornly Anglophone until after his death. Other examples are legion. What were the forces that kept languages other than English out of these mid-century texts? Should we search for explanations in the authors’ personal experiences, creative decisions, exigencies of the publishing world, prevalent views of child psychology? Finally, can we re-capture America’s missed opportunity to champion multilingualism as everyday normality for millions of reading children—and how?
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Oce Lost in Berlin: A City Guide for Polyglot Kids
What can an agoraphobic, threadbare stuffie do to champion multilingualism among English-speakers in the U.S. and elsewhere? Wonders, that’s what! This is the message behind Oce Lost in Berlin, a book that engages the audience most underserved by language instruction in the Anglophone West: the 6- to 12-year-olds. With a fearful and laundry-worn plush Ocelot (Oce) as its protagonist, the story takes the reader on a journey through Europe’s hippest city, Berlin. Lost by his longtime owner, Ocelot slowly sheds his apprehensions about the strange-sounding idiom of the foreign “urban jungle.”
Disguised as an illustrated city guide for the young ones, Oce Lost in Berlin smuggles cross-cultural awareness as well as foreign-language vocabulary, grammar, and even phonetics into its stories of Oce’s adventures in a new tongue and one of its most colorful homes. Often enough, the reader runs into German of the accented variety - a fact of life in a city like Berlin. On many occasions, code-switching and multilingual puns hold court - as they do in reality. Ultimately, the book aims less to provide instruction in a specific language than to create excitement for language-learning in general. Against the backdrop of ongoing discussions, which tend to reduce multilingualism to a wellness regimen (languages, we are told, help with math skills and slow down aging) or a business tool (they lend us more lucrative jobs and boost economies), Oce Lost in Berlin advocates multilingualism as an everyday normality not confined to the classroom. This normality begins with a kid snuggling up with a good book.
Illustrated by the talented Calder Bragdon Fong. If you are a publisher or a literary agent and would like to request a manuscript copy, please use the Contact page.
