Representing Spanishes: Language Diversity in Children’s Literature

ABSTRACT

Spanish language diversity has been a reality in the United States. The Spanish language has been featured in children’s books since the late 1960s and early 1970s, with much of it carelessly represented, with translation mistakes and stereotypical portrayals of English language learners. With the increase of Latinos/as authors, representations of Spanish became more varied and nuanced in fictional texts. The representation of Spanish varieties, or Spanishes, in children’s literature can offer panoramic views of English language learners as main characters using their cultural and linguistic resources as they participate in families, classrooms, and neighborhoods. Nevertheless, how children are guided to read these texts largely shapes how they interpret authors’ and characters’ language use. Besides complete translations Spanishes are represented through the genres of dual-language texts, books with bilingual text, and translanguage texts, books laced with Spanish words. This article documents our critical collaborative inquiry of our teaching experiences and insights with these two genres. Critical questions for analysis of language diversity in children’s literature are proposed.

KEYWORDS:

• Spanish
• English language learners
• critical pedagogy
• Latino/a children and families
• code-switching
• dual Langauge

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.