The Cultural and Educational Benefits of Bilingual Books

Dr. Cynthia Weill has spent her career advocating for high-quality children's literature, and her series of bilingual early reader books champion multicultural learning for all ages.

- BY MICHAEL WOODSON

With ubiquitous research pointing toward cognitive and academic advantages to children who learn more than one language at an early age, bilingual early readers have become a mainstay in many a home library.

Dr. Cynthia Weill is one such author of bilingual early reader books who not only understands the benefits of bilingual books, but in her creative endeavors, she strives to make the whole experience a multi- and intercultural collaboration.

Weill holds a Doctorate of Education from Columbia University. She has lived in Vietnam, Spain, and Mexico, and she currently lives in New York City. By day, she runs the Center for Children's Literature at Bank Street College of Education. “We are dedicated to promoting the highest quality in literature for children,” she says. “Children will love to read if they find themselves in the pages of a book and if the work speaks to them.”

In the 1990s, Weill won a Fulbright scholarship to work in Mexico and found herself utterly fascinated by the crafts she saw there. “I kept looking at them, thinking, How could these be educational tools? They're brightly colored, they're fun, they just speak to children.” And from that curiosity, her first book was born— a bilingual alphabet book called ABeCedarios.

Her latest book,