Cover Image: Dylan's Birthday Present

Dylan's Birthday Present

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Member Reviews

I really enjoyed this book. As I'm bilingual myself, I could see myself in parts of Dylan, and in the story. It was a fun read, and I would definitely recommend it.

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Logic and Language Save the Day

It's Dylan's birthday, and his parents tell him he can ask for anything for his special day. He asks for a pet chicken that he can speak all of his languages to: English, Portuguese, and Ukrainian. His father is from Portugal, and his mother is from Ukraine; both parents speak to him in their native languages as well as English. His father brings home the chicken, and Dylan runs off to share it with his friend Emma. When she learns why Dylan wanted a chicken, she asks if she can speak to it in Zulu; her parents are from South Africa. The children talk to the chicken in their languages and feed it, but it wanders away without them noticing. When Dylan realizes that his birthday gift is gone, he gets upset, but Emma launches a logical search. After a few missteps, they find the chicken at the house of a Portuguese man. They can only do so because Dylan recognizes the Portuguese words on the man's t-shirt and can then ask him in Portuguese if he has seen his chicken. The children return to Dylan's home with the chicken in tow and enjoy a birthday celebration.

The book has medium-toned, well-done illustrations; each character has a unique look. I found one of them amusing. While they are looking for the chicken, the children come across a grumpy older female neighbor; it is said that pets and their owners start to look like each other, and in this case, the woman's dog looked as grumpy as she was! By the way, the author includes a link and QR code to a website where you can hear the foreign-language words in this book spoken. I think that's a great resource for a parent who wants to read this to a child or for a child who will read it herself or himself. As a word nerd myself, though not a polyglot, I liked that it was language that helped Dylan and Emma solve their dilemma. We often encourage little boys in America not to cry, and Dylan did so with abandon; that's not a bad lesson, although I did think he turned into tears perhaps a little too quickly. I loved that it was his friend Emma who was logical, kept her cool, and got them started searching. I found myself wondering at Dylan’s choice of a chicken for a gift because of language. Would it make more sense for him to ask for a parrot? Then, at least, the pet could talk back, and Dylan might even teach the parrot different languages. That would have been fun. All in all, I found this to be a delightful story that highlighted the importance of friendship and different cultures and their languages.

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A beautiful little story about a boy and his pet, which goes missing. A nice way of introducing other cultures to children and has a few points that you could discuss. A sweet little story.

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Fantastic little book which is a great way of introducing other cultures and languages into a child's life!
Lovely little illustrations too.
Great little book

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I can see the earnest efforts put in to bring out this storybook!

Well done I would say!
The strong parts of this book are the subtle colored but alluring illustrations, love for animals, community interaction and thoughtful parents.

This book aims to have some basic idea about the different languages.

I like the parts where words in different languages are used here and there alongwith
the references.

I feel the storytelling/narration could have been much better. I look for playful writing and more of active descriptions in such stories.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

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This book was a fun read with my 5 year-old. She enjoyed reading the story about Dylan's birthday pet and how he and his friend worked together to find the pet. The story was entertaining and the build up was nice. I definitely liked how they incorporated the different languages to help us learn new phrases.

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I read this book last night and I thought that it was lovely.

I really liked the story and it was lovely how the different languages were utilised in the book – and it is a great way to get younger children to pick up and learn a few of these words.

It was a good story, well developed and well written and the images were great.

It is 3.5 stars from me for this one, rounded up to 4 stars for Goodreads and Amazon!

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Dylan gets a pet chicken, Kiki, for his birthday, who he wants to teach many languages like his family have taught him. When Kiki arrives, he goes to show his bilingual friend Emma, but Kiki goes missing, so they set out to find his new pet chicken, and their polyglot superpowers may come in handy.

I think it’s a lovely idea to encourage children to learn other languages through this book, especially in a country where languages are so underrated in the education system. A QR code at the beginning also provides access to audio clips of the foreign words to aid pronunciation. One thing that was a bit tricky was the colour of the these words against the illustrated background. Although it was great for making them stand out from the rest of the text, it actually made them trickier to read.

Story-wise, it did sometimes feel as if it were there to solely educate, but by the end I did start to like the characters too. Overall, it’s a decent read, especially for introducing kids to the idea of learning languages, with one of my favourite aspects being how language abilities are made appealing by calling them ‘polyglot superpowers.’

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The illustrations in this book are lovely - soft and inviting but in beautiful colours to keep an element of fun for the young reader that they’re aimed at.

The foreign language words are included gently, as a natural part of the wider narrative, and I was very impressed at the inclusion of easy to find translations at the bottom of the page and a QR code that helps you with pronunciation. Portraying a knowledge of language as a superpower is a fantastic way to open a child’s mind to the wonder of other languages, but also their own native language and reading.

I really enjoyed the dynamic of Dylan crying and his friend Emma being the one to console him. It’s important for me that the books my son reads books that encourage him to explore his feelings and don’t feed unhealthy stereotypes; this book definitely ticks that box.

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It's Dylan's birhday and he gets to choose what he wants as a gift, but his choice brings him a little problem which may require more than one language to be solved...

I really enjoyed this little story. I'm planning on gifting it to my nephew who only speaks Spanish and recently moved to the United States, because I believe it's a perfect story for kids that may think learning a new language is not important. I loved how the author managed to include more than two languages very naturally and without making it complicated for kids.

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My siblings absolutely liked it when I read this to them. They were very entertained by Dylan’s story. The illustrations were really good. I had fun reading this to them.

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This was an adorable book that teaches about multilingual families. It is fun and informative. This is a great book to read to teach kids about acceptance and diversity. This would be a great addition to any library.

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This is a unique story. It's not usual for a little boy to ask for that kind of present on his birthday but it has a really good message for everyone who reads it. It talks about language diversity and how can people really connect despite what we call the language barrier. It is interesting but not so impactful for me.

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THIS STORY WAS ABSOLUTELY ADORABLE!! I love how the concept of the story was about the importance of multi-linguism. The author did a great job expressing a story about an ethnic world composed of many languages and cultures. This is an important lesson for all children to learn. This helps the younger generation connect with each other all around the world. WELL DONE!!

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This book is a great way to introduce readers to the topic of different languages, cultural diversity, and acceptance of differences

**Thankyou Netgalley and publisher for providing me a free copy of this book in exchange for a honest review**

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Dylan asks for a pet chicken for his birthday. His goal is to make his chicken a polygot, just like him. This story is well written, and cute. I really enjoyed learning the other languages used in the book. The best part was that these languages are unique- Ukrainian, Zulu, and Portuguese.

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Love the illustrations and message in this book.

Thank you for allowing me to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

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This is a book that teaches some words in different languages. Dylan gets a chicken for his birthday and he takes it around and then loses it and tries to find it along with his friend Emma. Dylan speaks Ukrainian, Portuguese and English. His friend, Emma, speaks Zulu and English. Illustrations are okay.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the eARC

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This is a book that tries to teach a few words of various languages, but ends up coming off as unrealistic and a bit elitist.

Right at the beginning, a subtle swipe is taken at the monolingual. Things don't get much better as we're launched into a ridiculous story. First, Dylan's birthday present is that he can have any present he can think of. (Say what?!) He chooses a chicken. So his father just goes out and buys him a live chicken. The thing inevitably runs away (because who needs fences or coops when you're trying to spoil your kid?) and Dylan and his friend Emma go on a neighbourhood journey to find the lost chicken. They encounter a stereotypical grumpy old woman who looks like she stepped out of historical fiction, and then a man who doesn't speak English. They find the chicken, and then Dylan's dad says he'll build a coop the next day. Um... ya think?

The illustrations are plagued by size issues and aren't very interesting to look at. They're "cute", but I still didn't like them. And for a book that's aiming to teach kids about different languages, only including six words in a 32-page book seems a little lazy. For a much better book that incorporates bilingualism seamlessly into the story, check out El Chupacabras by Adam Rubin.

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I requested and received an e-ARC of this book from NetGalley and Linguacious in exchange for my honest review.

This book was cute! Dylan speaks many languages at home and for his birthday wants to get a chicken. I like that this book provides a link for children and parents to hear how the foreign words are pronounced. I also like that this book is introducing kids to other languages and cool words like polyglot.

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