“Venezuelan children are growing up in a TT where there are no Republic Readers for them, there is no Boyo and Carla for them, and they do deserve to be represented in some form of local literature. That was really the core of this project.”
The statement was made by Talia Khan, co-author of the newly-published bilingual children’s book, Juanita. Written in English and Spanish, the book follows the adventures of Juana, a recent Venezuelan child migrant to Trinidad, and her diverse troupe of friends, including her cat Malu, as they explore her new country and its culture while navigating the challenges of making a home in a new place.
The book was written by recent graduates in the Spanish programme at UWI – Bilqees Mohammed, Jesse Ragbir, Rayne Affonso, and Khan – who were volunteers in mentoring initiatives for Venezuelan migrant children.
Khan said, “We all did a bachelor of arts in Spanish at UWI, and we all did something called a testing team where we worked with Unicef and UWI together to test Venezuelan children in English, so they would be able to learn at the primary schools, and afterwards we coordinated the migrant mentorship programme at the UWI Centre for Language Learning (CLL). We realised that the ever-increasing migrant population does not have access to bilingual fiction books that have the power to drive imagination and learning. We decided we wanted to write a book for the children because we realised there wasn’t much material available for us to use, so we thought it would be a good idea for us to create our own material as well.”
The book consists of 16 chapters, each containing vocabulary lists, reading comprehension questions, and a written reflection exercise.
The quartet said these activities enhance reader interaction with the text and gradually increase foreign language proficiency.
They said both native English and Spanish speakers can use Juanita to improve their second languages, since the content and exercises are available in bilingual format.
Mohammed said the four divided the work on the book according to their strengths, and then sent it to Venezuelan adults and children for review.
She said Ragbir, who spent half his life in Venezuela and half in Trinidad, was the first person to give them cultural input that might be applicable for Venezuelans living here.
“After we finished the draft, we had several rounds of advanced reading copies (ARCs) sent to children as well as adult Venezuelans. Venezuelan UWI lecturer Romulo Guedez was one of the first people to give us edits and cultural feedback. Both English-speaking and bilingual children gave us feedback as to how they felt, if the work fit the current migrant situation and their own experiences.”
She said the first few chapters were also shared with children in mentoring sessions and they enjoyed them. Khan said she also tested the first three chapters with children at the NGO Ryu Dan Empowerment Foundation in Enterprise, where she was interpreting and teaching English to Venezuelan migrant children.
“They
