Where Fluent Began.
Hello my Fluent readers!
Welcome to my blog - where I share with you my stories about multilingual parenting.
Today I am going to tell you the story of how the dream of making books in all languages came to life.
The birth of Fluent, begins with the birth of my son. Boujemaa came to us on a spring day when the flowers were probably in bloom but to tell you the honest truth - I was not noticing them at all… at that particular point. I was having labor pain.
Birth was a shocking experience for me. And in that state of shock I had the sense that I had to start at the beginning. Where is the beginning of the life of this child? When I saw my wrinkly babe my thoughts were “welcome to this world” مرحبا بك في هذا العالم I had an overwhelming almost blinding amount of focus for the first time in my life.
For me the beginning meant it was time to clean house - roll up my sleeves and get to work! How was I going to make the world a better place? How was I going to make it safe yet challenging? How was I going to give this little one an environment to thrive in? I had to DO something! But, naturally, I had just had a baby, so to be honest I spent that first year after that trying to get 5 more minutes of sleep and wiping up EVERY kind of fluid imaginable. (I see you parents. I see you.)
Fluent (the dream) rested, it slept for me while I was not sleeping, and patiently waited until I was ready. It grew tired and finally it gave me a flaming nudge when I tried to order Arabic books for my partner to read to Boujemaa. First of all - at the time there wasn’t much! One beautiful dictionary - which I adore and love and looked at with my baby despite the tearing of pages.
Other than that dictionary there were only stories in, well… Arabic. (Which FYI I can read but can't use. I took 4 courses in Academic Arabic in University and other than words like الأمم المتحدة which translates as “United Nations” - didn’t take away much vocabulary.) I ordered some but Boujemaa was not engaged. The worst part is I couldn’t read it!
I talked to other parents of multilingual kids. I heard stories! One momma I talked to told me they had their parents ship books from Portugal at great expense, another said she went all the way back to Korea JUST TO GET BOOKS IN KOREAN. Every parent I talked to said the same thing. Getting books was either an ordeal - or an ordeal too great. Language learning was on the back burner when there was just too much else to do! (I see you parents. I see you.)
I had to make a change! So many lost opportunities to learn language through reading. For me it seemed like so many opportunities to speak and connect to grandparents and learn about culture and heritage diminished. And it was too much for me - I had to change the system… Somehow!
I decided I was going to find a way to make it EASY to get high-quality, literary, books that are beautifully illustrated in every language and dialect. I wanted ONE book for my family - one story that could be read in English (my first language) German (my mom’s first language) Arabic (the language of B’s religion) Moroccan (the language of his father and paternal grandparents) and French (the language of his school). One story that can be read by anyone.
I also wanted the stories to be about us - in all of our diversity. When I think of “us” I think of my Toronto people. I think the cultural fusion in Toronto is happening in urban areas all over the world and the diaspora of peoples with all kinds of expressed identities is moving to rural Canada and other rural parts of countries too.
I want these real stories about the people I know and their unique beauty. Honest, diverse, a little bit never heard of before, characters are where we will look to see ourselves. And I want all babies to see themselves represented both visually and linguistically in books and stories. “The Little Rabbit” , the very first book, is the very beginning of this dream.
Let's see where she takes us shall we?
