Hello World!

Hello World

By: Jonathon Litton

I have been meaning to put a post up about this book for months!  I first came across it last summer at the Literati Bookstore in Ann Arbor.  I sat for nearly half an hour paging through the book, flipping up the little tabs and being amazed by the myriad of languages that exist around the world. It took everything I had to walk out the door that day without it in my hands, but as I was continuing to amass translated texts at that time, I put this one on the wish list for the future.  I even put up a quick mention of it on my Facebook page then, noting how special and unique I thought it was so that I wouldn't forget to eventually come back to it and hoping that someone else might be inspired to pick it up as well.

A few days before Christmas, I walked into my kid's elementary school to volunteer for their class parties, stopping by the front office to sign in.  The ladies in the office stopped me, telling me "Santa" had stopped by and left something for me, handing me a wrapped package.  I was baffled to see my name scrawled on the paper and tore into it to find a brand new copy of this book!  As much as I questioned the staff, my family and friends, I have yet to learn who so generously gifted me a copy of this beautiful book.

The book is larger than your average picture book and each double page spread features one of the seven continents.  A small figure and a "lift a flap" element exists for languages on that continent.  The name of the language is on the outside, and when you flip it up the word "hello" in that language appears, along with a phonetic pronunciation and an indication of the number of people in that specific location that speak the language.

The book also has other fun facts and interesting details about the regions, native speakers, words from the language and demographic information.  The final two pages then share those same languages saying "Good-Bye"

I have spent hours with this book since it was so kindly gifted to me, flipping up each of the little tabs and trying out how to say "Hello" in languages from around the world.  I think there is immense potential for this book to be used in the classroom and would highly encourage any teachers out there to check it out.