Discovering Words

One of a quartet of trilingual books by Neepin Auger, a Cree artist, educator, and mother, Discovering Words was originally published as a board book in 2013 and has now been reissued in a paperback format with new cover art. If the book were to have a subtitle, it could be “An Alphabet Book” as the words to discover are arranged alphabetically, in English, from “apple” to “zig zag”. Each letter of the alphabet, lower case only, is treated on a single page, with the English word being followed by its (bolded) French and (italicized) Cree equivalents. Although many of the words, such as “book”, “orange”, “rainbow” and “x-ray” are universal in nature, others, like “sweat lodge” and “teepee”, reflect Auger’s cultural background. Each word is accompanied by one of Auger’s illustrations, and sometimes she will give a common word a visual cultural twist, such as occurs with “jacket”. The only somewhat discordant note occurs with the words connected to the letter “u” – “up to”. The accompanying illustration portrays an adult in the act of lifting an infant up to the sky.

The book’s final four pages are given over to a “Pronunciation Guide” in which a thumbnail of the original illustration is followed by the English word and the French and Cree translations. Auger appears to assume that the book’s readers’ first language is English as the pronunciation assistance is only provided for the French and Cree words.

orange orange osâwâs
oh-ron-zh osaawaas

The polyglot aspect of Discovering Words would make it a useful home purchase in those situations in which more than one of the book’s languages is being spoken. The book obviously has formal schooling applications as well.