1001 languages on bilingual-picturebooks.org

There are countless children who have their first contact with this wonderful thing called book in a foreign language: refugees, immigrants, indigenes, children of language minorities, or just children in a language community so small that there are no children’s books. 

For them books might become a strange thing, that let their parents feel uncomfortable. Perhaps the family feels frustrated and in worst case the children feel like speaking the “wrong” languages. The hurdle to have a look in another book might become very, very high. 

We need more bilingual picture books to reach those families and showing them the joy of reading together. Showing them that their language is treasure. 

We have talked to editors. But they told us, that bilingual picture books are no thing to earn money. So, the book pirates decided to realize the non-profit project „1001 languages on bilingual-picturebooks.org“. 

The idea is that children and youngsters can publish their own stories with their own pictures and become story tellers. A network of volunteers translates the books into their mother tongues.  The families, schools, and kindergartens all over the word can download the books in their special language combination for free. For as much books as possible we record audio books. So that the families read their own languages and listen to the second one.   

So far there were over 400 children from 4 continents written over 35 books. Over 200 volunteers have translated the books in over 75 languages. Every second day there is a new translation. There were over 65,000 downloads in over 950 different language combinations. 

The whole project is funded by donors like you. 

With your help it is possible that families, schools or kindergartens use www.bilingual-picturebooks.org for free!