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Joy of parenthood

As the old Japanese saying goes, "February runs away," and the eventful March is coming in two days. Back in my home country, it is time for peach blossoms also admired on the occasion of the girl's festival, the third of March. I wish we had those delicate pink blossoms in our garden. But instead, we have pretty yellow flowers of mimosa started to open in time for the International Women's Day. Spring is just around the corner. I said "eventful March" not only for my personal matters but also for my city, Bologna. In one week, the 60th edition of Bologna Children's Book Fair will be hosted here. This annual event, as a book fair exclusively dedicated to the market of children's literature, is the word's largest. Although the fair itself is a business-to-business event, there will also be various art, book, and educational side-events in town on this occasion.    It was back in 2019 that I attended the fair for the first time as part of my resear...
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How does it sound when fallen leaves are dancing in the air?

Autumn is perhaps the best time for kids to have fun in the nature. My son enjoys walking on the fallen leaves, finding acorns and chestnuts in the woods. So the heroine of this book is. This Japanese book I found in my favourite library in Bologna features a story of this girl enjoys walking in the autumn nature. She finds fallen leaves, acorns, bagworms, dragonflies and imitates their movement, as if to dance with them.  The joy of reading this book aloud together with my son is perhaps attributed to the many Japanese onomatopoeias to be found throughout the book. For example, to describe the sound she makes when walking on the ground covered with autumn leaves,  we read, "kasa kasa kasa,"  and if fallen leaves are turning around slowly in the air, we say,  "kuru, kuru, kururi ." How about in your language? I also love the warm watercolour tones of the illustration by Michiko Egashira, the author. At the end of the story, after her father joins her walk, she finds...
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He's already got bilingual ears

Hi there. I am writing this post from Bologna, Italy where we moved back from Japan in the mid-summer.  It has been a great year for my son to get to know his Japanese grandparents, family, and friends he made there.  He is shortly turning two years old, and is more attracted than ever to words. So we have much more fun reading books together.  Every page of the books is filled with images that make him a curious boy. He can't help pointing at them and saying "Oh? Ah?" as if to ask "What's this?" In the beginning,  he was just doing this with illustrations, but now he also recognizes letters (both Japanese and English/Italian alphabets) and numbers, asking me how to pronounce them. And guess what, if I were perhaps half asleep and would answer him with the same words to different images, he would immediately raises his voice and says "Ah! Ah!" to warn me.  Do you remember this Miffy's picture book I previously talked about ? He still loves it a...
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