What I am looking for are board books that were written in a language other than English and then translated into English for English-speaking adults to read to their small humans. I love that these can differ a lot from books originally written for an English-speaking market. Also, it is one of the ways I’m hoping to diversify the collection of books I have access to. At first, I naively thought it wouldn’t be that much of a challenge. Off the top of my head, I could think of Dick Bruna’s Miffy books (translated from Dutch by Olive Jones) and Marcus Pfister’s The Rainbow Fish (translated from German by J. Alison James). That is two titles right there, so how hard could this be? However, after searching, I found many more books that fell into the bilingual or language learning type. A few looked lovely like Kiss by Kiss/Ocêtôwina: A Counting Book for Families written by Richard Van Camp and translated by Mary Cardinal Collins and ¡Cucú! En El Mar/ Peekaboo! In the Ocean written by Cocoretto and translated by Yanitzia Canetti, for example. However, these did not fit exactly what I was hoping to find. Eventually, I found what I was looking for, and I have a list below that I hope I can expand upon at a later date. For now, let me offer you some choices for your own board book perusal. If you’re looking for more recommendations for little readers, check out these space books for babies or best busy books for toddlers. And if I find more board books translated into English, I’ll come back and update you all, don’t worry.
