Cuddled and Carried / Consentido y Cargado (“Beginnings” Collection)

author: Dia L. Michels

translator: Victory Productions (text)
translator: The Spanish Group (teachers’ guide / back matter) 
illustrator: Mike Speiser

Science, Naturally! 2018, 2019

preschool

A year after its publication, Cuddled and Carried / Consentido y Cargado is being re-released in a 6 x 8-inch edition, with a new teacher's guide and supplemental back matter. The book is also still available in a larger format in paperback and hardback.

Rather than pre-readers themselves, the target audience appears to be parents and preschool teachers. Rather than being geared to very young children, this series uses an adult framework. Even with illustrations, the vocabulary is far beyond what pre-readers can relate to. Words such as “grooms,” “guides,” “cuddles,” “snuggles,” “shelters,” “nurtures,” “nuzzles,” and “nourishes” lose pre-readers. 

Six pages of back matter are presented in very small type, and text, illustrations and activities appear to be tailored to students way beyond preschool—more likely, at grades 5-up. The first part contains definitions and activities, including a list and description of  “Animal Classes / Clases de animales” (Bird / Pájaro, Reptile / Reptil, Fish / Pez, Mammal / Mamífero, Amphibian / Anfibio, and Arthropod / Artrópodo). This section instructs students to match the animals pictured in the book to its correct class, and identify which classes appear more than once, and which do not appear at all. Another section, “Care and Attachment / Cuidado y Apego,” includes Cache Mammals / Mamíferos que escondan, Follow Mammals / Mamíferos que siguen, Nest Mammals / Mamíferos que anidan, and Carry Mammals / Mamíferos que carman; and instructs students to “review the definitions provided here and try to match the mammals in this book to the way the mother cares for her babies.” 

Except for the excellent cover illustration, Speiser’s watercolor artwork is for the most part flat, with a limited range of colors and shades; and lacking texture and feeling. The animals in some are naturalistic and in others, exhibit human expressions. The design is awkward, with illustrations falling into the gutters and cutting off the images. (In one case, the mama elephant’s left ear is cut off and, on the other side, parts of the mama seal’s head and body are chopped off.) The full-bleed spreads, while somewhat better, still do not come together smoothly.

Almost all of the Spanish translations—in the text and the back matter—are either incorrect or presented in standard American English rather than standard or colloquial Spanish. Here are a few examples:

• “Consentido” means “consented” or “indulged,” not “cuddled,” which would be “acurrucado” or “abrazado.” “Cargado” means “loaded,” not “carried.” When a diaper is full, it’s said to be “encargado.” “Carried” would be “llevado.”

• “Mi mamá me limpia” means “my mom cleans me,” which is appropriate, but it’s not a translation of “My mama grooms me,” which would be “Mi mamá me prepara.” (Animals sometimes groom each other and humans sometimes groom their animals, but human moms don’t groom their young children, so this example in English is meaningless to pre-readers.)  

• “Mi mamá me mima” means “my mom pampers me,” not “My mama snuggles me.” That would be, as above, “Mi mamá me accurruca.”

• “Mi mamá me da calor” means “My mom makes me hot” or “My mom gives me warmth,” rather than “My mom cuddles me,” which would sound better as “Mi mamá me abraza.” 

The final two-page spread depicts a family, whose members are sitting together on a couch. In English, the text reads, “My family loves me very much,” and it’s translated as, “Mi familia me da mucho amor.” This is literal, word-for-word Spanish; no one talks like that. Rather, it would be “Mi familia me quieren mucho” or “Mi familia me ama mucho.”

And, finally, that everyone in a Black family (dad, baby, grandma,  mom, older sister) is depicted with the exact same complexions, eyes, eyebrows, noses, and teeth—and, except for one of them, the exact same facial expressions—is a racist trope.

Books that are presented as bilingual or multilingual must be faithful to both or all of the languages. Especially when they’re marketed as educational materials for children, there is no room for error. Cuddled and Carried / Consentido y Cargado does not meet this important criterion and is not recommended.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 9/11/19)

Míl gracias a mis amigas y colegas, María Cárdenas y Judy Zalazar Drummond.

If My Mom Were a Platypus: Mammal Babies and Their Mothers // Si mi mamá fuera un ornitorrinco: Los bebés mamíferos y sus madres

author: Dia L. Michels
illustrator: Andrew Barthelmes

translator (Spanish): The Spanish Group, LLC

Science, Naturally! 2014 (English), 2019 (Spanish) 

grades 3-6

Each of 13 short sections begins with an attractive full-bleed double-page spread of a particular mammal with her young at home in their environment. The final section depicts a human family. The text on the right and a first-person heading connect young readers with each particular mammal: “If my mom were a platypus…I would have hatched from an egg!” (English edition) and “Si mi mamá fuera un ornitorrinco…¡yo hubiera salido de un huevo!” (Spanish edition).

Barthelmes’ detailed naturalistic animal portraits, in thick oils on gesso paper, are colorful and inviting: a soon-to-be-mama platypus about to prepare her almost-hatched eggs, a mama elephant protecting her newborn calf with her trunk, a mama koala on a eucalyptus tree with her joey on her back, a mama giraffe with her calf peeking from between her front legs. Opposite each portrait the baby mammal is asked, “How were you born?” (“¿Cómo naciste?”) 

Details highlighted in pen-and-ink and brown-tinted watercolor sketches of various aspects of the mammal and her baby fill out the next two pages. There are three more questions: “How did you grow?” (“¿Cómo creciste?”), “What do you know?” (“¿Qué sabes?”), “And what do you eat?” (“¿Y qué comes?”), followed by a third-person “Fascinating Fact” (“Un hecho fascinante”).

This premise requires young readers to suspend disbelief, which is a fairly easy thing for most of them to do. It’s not a bad formula; rather, in some ways it’s engaging. Readers will look for similarities and differences between and among species of mammals to see how “mothers” do what mothers do. (This might have worked better had questions been posed that actually related to human children as well as other mammals—such as “Where do you live?” “What do you eat?” “How do you learn?” “Who are your friends?” “What games do you play?”)

But there are several major problems. One is with the Spanish edition. Good literary translators are interpreters who are skilled in capturing a story’s spirit, humor, and rhythm. But when publishers contract with translation companies, what they get are commercial rather than literary translations. Generally, this has a poor outcome, and that’s what happened here. While Michels’ text is evocative and young-reader friendly, the Spanish sections are clunky and contain mistakes.

For instance, this is part of the English version of the elephant sequence: 

Then the other elephant cows and calves gathered round, rumbling loudly, waving their trunks, and flapping their ears. I dropped to the ground from between my mom’s hind legs with a big thump.

This is how it was translated: 

Luego, los otros elefantes hembras y sus crías se reunieron, haciendo mucho ruido, moviendo sus trompas y aleteando sus orejas. Caí al suelo de entre las patas traseras de mi mamá, haciendo mucho ruido. 

This is the Spanish translation back to English: 

Then, the other female elephants and their young met, making a lot of noise, moving their trunks and flapping their ears. I fell to the floor between my mother’s hind legs, making a lot of noise.

In skimming over the “How Were You Born?” sections, several examples of poor translation jumped out.  

This is part of the English version of the golden lion tamarin monkey section: 

We all slept huddled together, enjoying each other’s warmth, companionship, and smell.

This is how it was translated: 

Todos dormíamos juntos, disfrutando del calor, la compañia y el olor de los demás.

This is the Spanish translation back to English: 

We all slept together, enjoying the warmth, company and smell of others. 

And this is the correct Spanish translation: 

Todos dormíamos juntos, disfrutando, el uno del otro, el calor, el compañerismo, y el olor.  [“Companionship” would be translated as “compañerismo” and “of each other” would be translated as “el uno del otro.”]

And this is part of the English version of Mexican free-tailed bat section:

My mom cradled me in her up-turned tail, nipped the umbilical cord, and licked me clean. Then I nursed while she gave me a thorough sniffing-over, squeaking constantly. I answered back in my high, clear voice.

This is how it was translated: 

Mi mamá me meció sobre su cola, que apuntaba hacia arriba, mordió el cordón umbilical y me lamió para limpiarme. Luego, me amamantó mientras me olió bien, chillando constantemente. Yo respondí usando una voz alta y clara.

This is the Spanish translation back to English: 

My mom rocked me on her tail, which pointed upwards, bit the umbilical cord and licked me to clean me. Then, she nursed me while it smelled good, screaming constantly. I responded using a loud and clear voice. [“Squeaking” is “chirriando.” “Screaming” is “chillando.”]

Although the publisher of Si mi mamá fuera un ornitorrinco assumes Spanish-speaking children as its readership, it’s clear that it was not translated with Spanish-speaking kids in mind and will not appeal to children who are hablantes (native Spanish speakers). Rather, the faulty Spanish and clunky translation are an insult to the intelligence of Spanish speakers—teachers and parents—who are expected to read this to children. 

The last section of this book—“But my mom is a human…and I was born in a birthing center!” / “Pero mi mamá es humana…¡y yo nací en un centro de maternidad!”)—is problematic as well. Switching from animal mammals (which have many different species but are pretty much the same within species) to human mammals (one species that contains at least hundreds of cultures and a variety of socio-economic classes) doesn’t work in the way it’s shown.

The illustration is of a white mother and father encircling their newborn baby. Mom, in bed, holds her swaddled newborn in her arms. She appears exhausted (of course) and dad, looking into her eyes, appears concerned. Behind them is a Black woman in a uniform. She appears to be balancing a scale to weigh the infant. 

Using a particular culture to refer to all humans—the “universal human experience”—centers and prioritizes the white Western nuclear family. All of the art and text in this section  marginalizes or erases all the many ethnicities, cultures, and socio-economic realities of our communities. To do this is not only inaccurate, it’s wrong to inflict this superiority on young readers. 

The final pages of this book—text and illustrations—could have accurately reflected the multicultural and multiethnic nature of the human family. Given Barthelmes’ talent, he might have created a full-bleed, double-page spread (or two) showing several families of varying cultures, ethnicities, gender identities, and structures. And given Michels’ talent, she could have created a text that would have brought the concepts of “mother” and “family” full circle. 

The Spanish translation could have accurately reflected the spirit and humor of the English text, the quality of writing and translation that was done for Science, Naturally’s first bilingual books, the One Minute Mysteries series. (See our reviews, https://decoloresreviews.blogspot.com/2016/10/one-minute-mysteries-more-short.html and https://decoloresreviews.blogspot.com/2017/07/one-minute-mysteries-short-mysteries.html).

If My Mom Were a Platypus: Mammal Babies and Their Mothers // Si mi mamá fuera un ornitorrinco: Los bebés mamíferos y sus madres could have been interesting and absorbing books that would have engaged young readers in an aspect of the biological sciences and with a human cultural component as well. As it stands, there’s too much lacking. It was a good idea without the imagination to make it work. Not recommended. 

—Beverly Slapin

(published 9/1/19)

Míl gracias a mis colegas, Judy Salazar Drummond, Lyn Miller-Lachmann and Noam Szoke.

One Minute Mysteries: Short Mysteries You Solve with Math! / Misterios de un minuto:¡Misterios cortos que resuelves con matemáticas!

author: Eric Yoder

author: Natalie Yoder 

translator: Yana Alfaro Villalobos

Science, Naturally! 2017

grades 4-8

This fifth volume in the Yoders’ One Minute Mysteries series, and the second in both Spanish and English, is the sister book to the science mysteries titles. As the publisher, Dia Michels, wrote to me, “Doing a bilingual math book brought with it a whole new set of challenges.”

The original project began as a series of father-and-daughter activities in which one wrote and the other edited, or both wrote together. Eric’s vision was, as he writes in his part of this foreword, to “show real-world applications of academic subject matter, using mystery as the vehicle,” and Natalie’s vision was to be able to figure out “everyday problems that could be solved using math.” Together, their aim was to make math more accessible and enjoyable. 

As with the science volumes, these challenging problems open up both discoveries and potential for curious, inquisitive minds. And that these 40 pint-sized “mysteries”—covering Math at Home, Math Outside, Math at Play, and Math Every Day, and including a Science Bonus Section—are presented as encountered and solved by children themselves, actually make math both approachable and fun.

As with the science volumes, the book design here is clear and the text is readable, without illustrations or clues to detract from each “mystery.” The problems are presented in English on the left and Spanish on the right and generally headed by puns in each language to grab attention. The images—black-and-white photos and drawings—are appropriately reserved for the “solution” pages: those on each two-page spread are related to each other so young readers can intuit more than one connection between image and solution. 

Among my favorite brain-teasers is “Pancake Mix-Up,” in which Meg has to figure out exactly how many single-serve packages of pancake mix to combine with milk, using several different kinds of measuring cups. All she had to do, she says, was to find the smallest number that was a multiple of both ounces of pancake mix and ounces marked on the measuring cups. As someone who’s math-challenged, to say the least, my solution would have been to make scrambled eggs.

But my hands-down favorite, probably because I was able to figure it out, is “Ice Cream, Anyone?” in which 21 energetic middle-school girls, celebrating the end of their field hockey season, visit Cora’s Ice Cream Parlor and request that each them get two different flavors of ice cream—and that each get something different from anyone else. But Cora has only 12 flavors.

Villalobos's colloquial Spanish translation reads well, and this layout of the mysteries and solutions enable hablantes, bilingual students, and English-only speakers to work in the language in which they’re most proficient, and look to the other side for corresponding words, phrases, and idioms that particularly interest them. And his puns are hilarious; for instance, his version of “Pancake Mix-Up” is “Manos en la Masa.” For those who don’t know, the interpretation would be “caught you with your hands in the cookie jar,” which, of course, has nothing to do with this math problem. I’m betting that it’ll cause both hablantes and bilingual kids to laugh out loud.

While it’s obvious that the authors used great care in choosing the photos of both children and adults who represent a diversity of age, ethnicity, and gender, I would like to have seen a representation of children and adults with disabilities and the spectrum of family configurations as well.

Also missing was a diversity of income levels. The problems feature predominantly middle- to upper-income families taking private golf lessons, staying at a dude ranch (in which they’re required to take part in the daily chores), or figuring out which kind of new car to purchase. One problem that was particularly problematic for me was this one:

Jada and Michelle’s school was closed for a winter teacher training day, so their parents decided to take a day off from work to take the family skiing. They were glad to see when they got there that there were no lines at the chair lifts.

With those suggested changes in mind, One Minute Mysteries: Short Mysteries You Solve with Math! / Misterios de un minuto:¡Misterios cortos que resuelves con matemáticas! is engaging and fun for math nerds (and their parents, if permitted), as well as youngsters who could benefit from some time away from video games. It’s recommended.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 7/4/17)

(Note: In this review, we originally credited Esteban Bachelet as the translator. Esteban translated One Minute Mysteries: More Short Mysteries You Solve with Science / Misterios de un minuto: ¡Más misterios cortos que resuelves con ciencias! And Yana Alfaro Villalobos translated this one. Sorry for the error.)

One Minute Mysteries: More Short Mysteries You Solve with Science! / Misterios de un minuto: ¡Más misterios cortos que resuelves con ciencias!

author: Eric Yoder 

author: Natalie Yoder

translator: Esteban Bachelet 

Science, Naturally! (2016) 

grades 4-8

This fourth in the One Minute Mysteries series, and the first in both Spanish and English, contains most of the short mysteries found in the previous three English editions.

The project began, as the foreword describes, as a series of father-and-daughter activities in which Eric wrote, Natalie rolled her eyes, Natalie wrote, and the two wrote side by side. Eric’s vision was “to emphasize (science’s) widespread, real-life applications,” and Natalie’s was “to (keep) the behavior and dialogue of the characters authentic.” Natalie writes that their technique involved, in part, “(staring) at a dead spider on the ceiling above my dad’s desk for hours and hours.” This approach apparently worked—very well.

For youngsters, these challenging problems open up both discoveries and potential for curious, inquisitive minds. And that these 45 pint-sized “mysteries”—covering Life Science, Earth and Space Science, Physical and Chemical Science, General Science, and including a Mathematics Bonus Section—are both encountered and solved by children themselves make this volume both fun and accessible.

Among my favorite brain-teasers is “And They Call This a Fair / Feria de cuadritos,” in which Kendall and Ruby construct a game for the science fair, in which they lay out 20 cardboard rectangles measuring 2” x 3” each. The problem is to arrange the rectangles in a way that will cover the most area. (This one stumped me for a minute, until I figured out that “area” does not necessarily mean “contiguous area.”)

But my hands-down favorite is “Think Outside the Box / Piensa fuera de la caja,” in which Axel has forgotten that his science project—“to construct and label a model representing either a plant or animal cell, describing the functions of at least four parts of the cell”—is due in ten minutes! And all he has is pizza scraps and an almost-empty pizza box! Can he do it? Of course he can! (Although this kind of construction is not easily replicable—you’d need to have the right kind of pizza, eat almost all of it, leave the correct scraps and use every second of your ten minutes—it’s a hoot!)

The book design is clear and the text is readable, without illustrations or clues to detract from each “mystery.” The problems are presented in English on the left and Spanish on the right and generally headed by puns in each language to grab attention. The images—black-and-white photos and drawings—are appropriately reserved for the “solution” pages: those on each two-page spread are related to each other so young readers can intuit more than one connection between image and solution. While it’s obvious that the authors used great care in choosing the photos of both children and adults who represent a diversity of age, ethnicity and gender, I would like to have seen representation of children and adults with disabilities and the spectrum of family configurations as well.

Bachelet’s colloquial Spanish translation reads well, and this layout of the mysteries and solutions enable English-speakers, hablantes, and bilingual students to work in the language in which they’re most proficient, and look to the other side for corresponding words, phrases, and particular idioms that interest them.

Engaging and fun for both science- and math nerds (and their parents, if permitted), as well as  youngsters who could benefit from some time away from video games, One Minute Mysteries: More Short Mysteries You Solve with Science! / ¡Más misterios cortos que resuelves con ciencias! is highly recommended.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 10/25/16)