‘It seems like everyone wants to learn Ukrainian.’ Exploring Children’s Responses to a Translingual Picturebook Erin Becht

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Abstract

In this article, I describe my experiences of engaging with linguistic and cultural aspects of an Irish Gaelic/English/Ukrainian translingual picturebook within an English Language Teaching (ELT) context in an international school in Spain. With the overarching objective of exploring languages and cultures, a group of 23 seven to eight-year-old students in a Year 3, English-medium class spent five lessons interacting with the picturebook I Want to Speak Ukrainian. In this study, I explore the children’s responses to this translingual, transcultural resource, considering the dual positions of participants who have a connection to the Ukrainian language and culture, as well as of those who are encountering them for the first time. The data illustrates the positive impact that translingual picturebooks can have on affirming identities, fostering interculturality, promoting metalinguistic awareness and positive language attitudes, and developing empathy towards language learning. The findings underscore the value of translingual picturebooks as a powerful pedagogical vehicle that can be used to respond to the multilingual and multicultural realities of diverse classrooms, while also fostering curiosity, understanding and respect towards less familiar languages and cultures.

Keywords: translingual picturebooks; linguistic diversity; identity; interculturality; Ukrainian refugee crisis

Erin Becht is a PhD student at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. She is based in Spain and has over ten years’ experience as an English, German and Spanish language teacher. Her PhD project explores the potential of translingual picturebooks in multilingual educational environments.

 

Introduction

The power of picturebooks to influence a child’s understanding of themselves and the world around them has been well documented (Dolan, 2014b; Ibrahim, 2024; Mourão, 2017; Short et al., 2023). As well as acting as mirrors in which children can see themselves reflected, picturebooks also serve as windows and sliding doors through which children can experience other perspectives and ways of life (Bishop, 1990). This popular metaphor illustrates the pedagogical potential of picturebooks to facilitate integration in a context of forced migration, simultaneously supporting the needs of children who are navigating an uncertain future within an often-unfamiliar environment, as well as those in the host community who are exposed to new languages, cultures, and experiences.

Ukraine is currently experiencing the largest humanitarian crisis Europe has witnessed in several decades (van Broekhoven, 2023). With over six million people fleeing the country as refugees and approximately 3.7 million additional displacements within Ukraine (United Nations, 2024), this conflict constitutes the ‘largest and fastest displacement crisis in Europe since World War II’ (International Rescue Committee, 2024, para. 2). Amidst this ongoing upheaval, set against the wider global landscape of polycrisis, safeguarding the education of displaced children emerges as a critical priority. In Spain, where over 200,000 Ukrainians have sought asylum since the outbreak of the conflict (United Nations, 2024), almost 30,000 Ukrainian students have been placed in local educational institutions (Ministerio de Inclusión, Seguridad Social y Migraciones, 2024). Consequently, as in many other countries worldwide grappling with humanitarian crises, educators in Spain are facing the immense responsibility of facilitating inclusive integration. This considerable task involves not only responding to the emotional, social, and educational needs of the Ukrainian students, but also addressing the socio-emotional needs of students within the Spanish host communities to help them navigate this largely unprecedented situation.

Picturebooks can impact these dual audiences in multiple ways. For displaced students, seeing themselves reflected in the classroom literature within an unfamiliar environment constitutes a vital step in affirming identities (Daly & Limbrick, 2020), while also sharing messages of hope that facilitate integration into new lives in new countries (Dolan, 2014a). Likewise, for students in host communities, picturebooks can serve as an age-relevant conduit for engaging with the complex and sensitive topic of war and displacement in the classroom (Lowery, 2024), and thus supporting the development of empathy (Dolan, 2014a).

While picturebooks highlighting refugee experiences certainly play an important role in supporting integration, a growing body of scholarship advocates for children’s literature that also responds to the multilingual, multicultural realities of students (e.g. Ibrahim, 2022). This is particularly relevant for displaced Ukrainian students who, amongst so much uncertainty, would benefit from maintaining connections with their language and culture within their new educational environments. Teachers require resources that not only affirm Ukrainian linguistic and cultural identities but also enable students to gain insight into the languages and cultures of their new classmates. However, my experience as a primary teacher in Spain has highlighted the scarcity of contextually relevant, linguistically, and culturally responsive picturebooks.

This article presents a discussion of children’s responses to one such picturebook: I Want to Speak Ukrainian (Breathnach & Myers, 2022), a translingual picturebook that combines reciprocal linguistic and cultural exchanges with the purpose of facilitating integration for Ukrainian children upon their arrival in their Irish host communities. My study sought to investigate how this resource was embraced amongst an international ELT audience. In the context of a Year 3 class in an English-medium international school in Spain, I explored children’s responses to this translingual, transcultural picturebook, considering the dual perspectives of participants who have a connection with the Ukrainian language and culture, as well as of those who are encountering them for the first time. I hope to highlight with this exploratory research the potential of translingual picturebooks for addressing the needs of displaced children alongside those of children within the host countries.

 

Defining multilingual picturebooks

Figure 1. Continuum of dual language picturebooks (Daly, 2025, p. 34)

While scholars use a wide range of terms to describe multilingual picturebooks (Hartmann & McGillicuddy, 2025), Daly (2025) recently classified them into three main formats (see Figure 1): (1) Dual (or multi) version picturebooks refer to multiple versions of a picturebook that share the same illustrations and design but are published separately, either simultaneously or retrospectively, in varied linguistic codes; (2) Parallel (or bilingual) picturebooks describe picturebooks where two languages are afforded a shared space within one book, each being used to tell the same story; (3) Translingual picturebooks comprise picturebooks where two or more languages are combined to tell one version of the story. In this category – also referred to as interlingual picturebooks (Hadaway & Young, 2017), integrated texts (Thibeault & Matheson, 2021), and plurilingual picturebooks (Gobbe-Mevellec & Paolacci, 2022) – rather than separating the linguistic codes, languages are interwoven throughout the verbal text, achieving more authentic representations of multilingual practices (Hélot, 2011; Moses, 2023), while also communicating multicultural perspectives (Ibrahim, 2020, 2022).

 

A translanguaging perspective

Translingual picturebooks exemplify translanguaging, a theoretical framework that reconceptualises the complex ways in which multilingual individuals make meaning through their language. Rather than treating named languages as separate, autonomous systems (Makoni & Pennycook, 2006), translanguaging theory posits that multilingual speakers draw upon a single, integrated linguistic repertoire, moving fluidly across linguistic features in ways that are continuously adapted to suit specific purposes and communicative contexts (Vogel & García, 2017). From this perspective, translanguaging highlights the creativity and adaptability of multilingual practices, reframing multilingualism not as a deficit, but as a resource to be leveraged for fostering meaning-making, learning, and identity formation (García et al., 2017).

As a multilingual learner myself with several years’ experience of teaching in multilingual settings, my positioning aligns with this view of multilingualism as a rich resource that should be harnessed and celebrated in the classroom. In ELT, learners are rarely monolingual in practice; rather, each child brings their own unique linguistic profile, shaped by prior experience, family repertoires, community practices and their new classroom experiences. Despite these diverse linguistic realities, considered within the global prominence of multilingualism (Chumbow, 2018), children’s literature continues to be produced largely in monolingual formats, often failing to reflect the multilingual practices of many of its young readers (Hélot, 2011; Ibrahim, 2020; Shi, 2022). My decision to focus on translingual picturebooks in this study reflects my belief that children should not only see their languages and experiences represented but also encounter those of others and thereby foster awareness, understanding, and appreciation of the interconnectedness of languages.

Literature Review

The value of multilingual picturebooks within educational spaces is widely supported. Alongside their pedagogical potential for language and literacy development in the language of education, home and heritage languages (Ma, 2008; Naqvi , Thorne, et al., 2013; Sneddon, 2008; Zaidi et al., 2022), scholars highlight their role in fostering home-school connections that leverage the multilingual and multicultural knowledge of the wider community (Brouwer & Daly, 2022; Harris et al., 2022). Moreover, picturebooks help to establish translanguaging spaces within the classroom (Ibrahim, 2022; Kesler et al., 2019; Pino, 2019). In this literature review, I present research concerning the affordances of multilingual picturebooks (including translingual, bilingual, and dual version formats), when aligned with Bishop’s (1990) analogy, acting as: (1) mirrors of cultural and linguistic identity; (2) windows into diverse linguistic realities; and (3) sliding doors to experience intercultural encounters.

 

Multilingual picturebooks as mirrors of linguistic and cultural identities

For children whose languages and cultures differ from dominant societal or educational groups, an opportunity to encounter a multilingual picturebook that reflects their linguistic and cultural realities plays a powerful role in affirming identities (Ibrahim, 2020). This was evident in a Canadian study by Naqvi et al. (2013) where read-alouds of dual versions of picturebooks in combinations of French, Punjabi, and Urdu alongside English encouraged 5-year-old children experiencing their home languages in the classroom to contribute to knowledge by sharing their linguistic and cultural realities. Similar outcomes were seen in the Pasifika Early Literacy Project in New Zealand, where multilingual picturebooks in a range of Pasifika languages served as a medium to encourage sharing of heritage languages, stories, and cultural knowledge in early literacy contexts (Si‘ilata et al., 2023). Further examples of fostering positive self-esteem were noted by Lee (2021), who introduced eight picturebooks that portrayed multicultural perspectives to a third-grade class of six Korean heritage language learners in the United States. Interaction with a translingual picturebook that introduced a protagonist of Korean heritage encouraged the children to make connections and share aspects of their own cultural identities and what made them ‘proud of being Korean’ (Lee, 2021, p. 40).

Other studies have shown that the use of linguistically and culturally diverse literature in the classroom promotes increased participation and engagement amongst minoritized learners. Zaidi (2020), for example, undertook an action research project in a Canadian middle school that promoted language exploration through dual versions of English picturebooks in Spanish, Tagalog, and Urdu. Her findings showed an increased engagement from students experiencing their home languages in the classroom. This was consistent with Daly and Limbrick’s (2020) initiative that provided over 350 picturebooks in a range of home languages for refugee children on a refugee resettlement programme in New Zealand. As well as the ‘pride and joy’ (Daly & Limbrick, 2020, p. 11) expressed on encountering books in their languages, behavioural issues were noted to decrease, attributed to the increased desire to be present and participate in the class.

 

Multilingual picturebooks as windows into multilingual realities

Just as it is important for minority children to see and hear reflections of themselves in the literature used in the classroom, it is equally important for majority children to obtain a window into other ways of being (Bishop, 1990). Multilingual picturebooks can serve as a window through which students can observe, explore, and gain awareness and appreciation of diverse linguistic realities (Hélot, 2011; Kümmerling-Meibauer, 2013). This was seen in Zaidi’s (2020) previously mentioned research, where she noted that encounters with these resources encouraged middle school students to become ‘curious about one another’s linguistic repertoires and about possibilities for expanding their personal linguistic repertoires’ (p. 286). Heightened appreciation and awareness of language was also corroborated in Barrett’s (2024) study, in which engagement with multilingual picturebooks in a broad range of languages witnessed twenty-five bilingual secondary students in New Zealand become more aware of their own language abilities, as well as the language diversity within their community.

Language awareness can also constitute awareness of the forms and functions of language, known as metalinguistic awareness, which can be fostered through interaction with multilingual picturebooks (Domke, 2024). For example, in Gkaintartzi and Triantou’s (2023) work, six pre-school children in Greece made ‘cross-linguistic comparisons and reflection’ (p. 47) while engaging in multilingual storytelling through bilingual picturebooks featuring a range of familiar and less familiar languages. Daly et al. (2022) extend the notion of developing language awareness through multilingual picturebooks to accentuate the act of ‘learning about language’ (p. 4). In their study of 8–11-year-old children in Arizona, multilingual picturebooks featuring a variety of linguistic landscapes facilitated the children’s development of working theories about what language is, how you learn a language, and what it means to know a language.

Multilingual picturebooks also provide a means of challenging children’s ‘assumptions of linguistic privilege and their knowledge of societal power structures around language and race’ (Daly et al., 2023, p. 217). By encouraging classroom conversations that address issues of language status and power, multilingual picturebooks have the potential to develop students’ critical language awareness (Domke, 2024; Przymus & Lindo, 2021). For example, while engaging with a translingual Indigenous Canadian picturebook, Lee (2021) was able to highlight the linguistic oppression suffered in residential schools, to which the primary school students responded with sympathy and empathy (Daly, 2021). Similarly, dialogic readings of translingual picturebooks with refugee students in an after-school programme in the USA revealed primary students’ insightful perspectives into the complex relationships between language, power, and status (Vehabovic, 2021). Such conversations are particularly important in educational contexts that are driven by a monolingual mindset (Ibrahim, 2019), a bias manifested in the predominantly monolingual literature presented to students in ELT contexts (Ibrahim, 2020).

 

Multilingual picturebooks as sliding doors to intercultural encounters

Interculturality requires the active building of understanding, communication, and mutual respect across cultures and now is recognized as a primary objective in language education (Bland & Mourão, 2017; Fielding, 2022; Mourão & Beecroft, 2024), yet children in ELT contexts are often limited to experiencing cultural diversity through the narrow lens of English-language cultures (Bland, 2022; Ibrahim, 2020, 2022). Multilingual picturebooks have the capacity to not only model diverse intercultural encounters through the plots, settings, and characters, but act as an intercultural encounter for the child reader through the navigation of a story that depicts lives and perspectives different from their own (Ommundsen, 2025).

While scholarship increasingly recognizes the intercultural potential of multilingual picturebooks (Ibrahim, 2020, 2025), empirical evidence that explores interculturally framed readings of multilingual picturebooks in the classroom is scarce. Some scholars have demonstrated that multilingual picturebooks can increase children’s intercultural awareness (Gkaintartzi & Triantou, 2023; Zaidi, 2020), including awareness of the ‘uniqueness of their own and other cultures as well as becoming conscious of the similarities between cultures’ (Naqvi, McKeough, et al., 2013, p. 504) which is an integral step in developing intercultural competencies (Byram et al., 2009). In Japan, Hasegawa et al. (2022) used multilingual picturebooks as a springboard to engage in intercultural activities that supported students aged 4-5 years old in not only identifying aspects of their own and others’ national contexts but also to recognize what unites us across countries. Lee’s (2021) aforementioned study also had elements of interculturality when third grade Korean heritage language learners in the USA were introduced to religious practices through a translingual picturebook about Ramadan, prompting them to make connections to their own cultural practices and think critically about voices that are marginalized.

Overview of the Picturebook

Figure 2. Cover of I Want to Speak Ukrainian
Used with permission from the author and illustrator

To address a gap in the research, my study aimed to discover the potential of one translingual picturebook and how it functions concomitantly as a window, mirror, and sliding door. I Want to Speak Ukrainian (see Figure 2) by Bláithín Breathnach and Lindsay Myers and self-published in 2022, was created in response to the refugee crisis in Ukraine. Following the story of an Irish schoolgirl, Leila, and her growing friendship with Darynka, a displaced Ukrainian girl who comes to stay at Leila’s house, the narrative focuses on the development of friendships based on reciprocal linguistic and intercultural exchange.

 

Figure 3. Recto of opening 10 from I Want to Speak Ukrainian
Used with permission from the author and illustrator

While the text is predominantly in English, instances of Ukrainian are interspersed throughout the story (see Figure 3), with linguistic shifts mirroring the Irish characters’ increasing knowledge of Ukrainian to communicate with their new classmate. Similarly, upon realizing that Darynka might be staying in Ireland for a while, Leila teaches her an Irish Gaelic phrase at the end of the story. The translingual nature also extends to the images, particularly in classroom scenes where the environmental text includes combinations of Irish and Ukrainian text, interwoven amongst illustrations of classroom materials such as posters, post-its and notebooks (see Figure 4). Proper nouns in Irish Gaelic and Ukrainian, as well as selected common nouns in Ukrainian are consistently presented using the orthography of the respective language. Moreover, as Ukrainian terms are written in both the Cyrillic Ukrainian alphabet and the Ukrainian Latin alphabet, pronunciation is facilitated for non-Ukrainian speakers, while still respecting Ukrainian linguistic conventions (Myers, 2025).

Figure 4. Verso of opening 10 from I Want to Speak Ukrainian
Used with permission from the author and illustrator

As their friendship with Darynka develops, Leila and her classmates learn about Ukrainian games, food, and traditions, while also sharing aspects of their own cultures. Avoiding an ‘us vs. them’ narrative (Hua, 2019), similarities between Irish and Ukrainian children are highlighted through a shared love of games and superheroes, a reciprocal exploration of Easter celebrations, and local Irish and Ukrainian legends. Through the modelling evident in the story, this picturebook supports Irish and Ukrainian readers alike in finding ways to relate to each other and building relationships across supposed borders. Given the highly contextualized nature of this resource, the following study sought to discover how the translingual picturebook would be received amongst an international ELT audience.

 

Research Context

My study took place in a private international school situated in northern Spain, which caters for approximately 300 students across early years, primary and secondary phases (2–18 years). According to admission data, 52% of students are Spanish, 9% from other European countries, 1% Asian, 1% North American, 3% South American; no national identity was disclosed for the remaining 34% of students. At the school, English is the primary medium of instruction. From Year 2 (ages 6–7), the community language of Spanish is allocated one lesson of instruction per day, while additional languages of French and German are formally integrated into the curriculum from Year 5 (ages 9–10). This exploratory investigation formed part of a broader ten-week doctoral action research project, where, through the medium of translingual picturebooks, children (ages 7–8) were introduced to a range of languages and cultures, corresponding with the home, heritage, and community languages identified amongst the participants. In this paper, I consider data from the seventh week of the research, which focused on introducing and exploring Ukrainian language and cultures through the picturebook I Want to Speak Ukrainian.

Aligned with an action research model of inquiry (McNiff & Whitehead, 2005), this research was conducted with the Year 3 class of 7–8-year-old children that I was teaching at the time of the investigation. My insider positionality as a teacher-researcher was balanced by a reflexivity strategy (Berger, 2015). All 24 students were invited to take part in the research, with 23 opting to participate. Parental consent was granted through letters of permission, accompanied by student consent forms that were first discussed with the families. Of the 23 participants (12 females and 11 males), all were bilingual in Spanish and English, with additional home and heritage languages identified as Basque, Chinese, English, Romanian, Russian, Spanish and Ukrainian.

Five one-hour lessons were dedicated to dialogic readings of the picturebook I Want to Speak Ukrainian. The lessons followed similar read-aloud structures, framed by linguistically or culturally driven pre- and post-reading activities, while prioritising time to respond to children’s comments, questions, and observations as they arose. Some open-ended discussion questions were prepared to promote linguistic and intercultural exploration. These included ‘What do you notice about the languages used on this page?’ and ‘How do you think this could vary for other Ukrainian or Irish children?’ The lessons were planned and taught in collaboration with members of the school’s Ukrainian community and one of the authors of the picturebook, Lindsay Myers, also contributed additional activity ideas and suggested areas for discussion.

Data were collected through observations, collections of student work, transcriptions of audio-recordings, and a daily reflection journal. Following Braun and Clarke’s (2021) guidelines for thematic analysis, the full dataset was analysed in six phases to identify recurring patterns and themes surrounding the participants’ linguistic and cultural engagement with the translingual picturebook and its associated activities. The main themes concerned attitudes towards languages and cultures, with sub-themes differentiated according to whether the participants were engaging with their own, or with less familiar linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

 

Findings and Discussion

In an analysis of the data, four main themes emerged in relation to the research question: ‘How do 7–8-year-old students in an English-medium classroom in Spain respond to a translingual picturebook that features Ukrainian language and culture?’ In the following section, I will present vignettes and excerpts of the data (using pseudonyms for the participants), discussing findings in relation to existing literature for the themes of a) affirming identities, b) fostering interculturality, c) promoting metalinguistic awareness and positive language attitudes, and d) developing empathy towards the language learning experience.

 

Affirming identities

Translingual picturebooks that respond to the diverse home languages of students within the classroom help affirm the linguistic and cultural identities of these individuals. In my study, this was of relevance to Gaby, a young child from Ukraine. On arrival at the school, she needed to learn English and Spanish to communicate with her classmates and teachers. However, during the lessons where we engaged with I Want to Speak Ukrainian, Gaby found herself in the reversed situation where most of the class was confronting an unfamiliar language with which she was very competent. Gaby responded extremely positively to the opportunity to share her linguistic skills. At the beginning of the week, when I disclosed that I might struggle to read some of the words due to my lack of Ukrainian knowledge, Gaby shyly raised her hand and volunteered to come to the front to accompany my reading so that the class could ‘hear how you would pronounce it in Ukrainian’. Gaby was able to assume the role of the class expert (Zaidi, 2020), which enabled her to display her pride in her linguistic heritage. Over the week, her timid murmurings transformed to proud, confident translations, clarifications and explanations, and she continuously offered to help the teacher and classmates with reading and writing Ukrainian, in addition to her own work.

Gaby also began to view the classroom as a place where her language was welcomed and valued (Daly & Limbrick, 2020). At the end of one of the lessons, she approached me asking if she could bring one of her books from home to share with the class, suggesting she could read a translated version aloud while she read the original Ukrainian version in her head. While bringing books to share was a regular practice amongst participants, this was the first time that Gaby had suggested bringing a book in her home language.

While Gaby overtly enjoyed sharing her language with her classmates, activities related to intercultural exploration were the greatest source of enthusiasm. She made several connections between cultural aspects featured in the picturebook and her own lived experiences (Lee, 2021). When reading the page where Darynka cooked Leila a Ukrainian meal, Gaby could not contain her excitement on seeing the food she recognized from home, mimicking shoveling her mouth full of her mum’s borshch [beetroot soup] and rubbing her tummy and pretending to drool at the thought of her Grandma’s varenyky [dumplings]. Her enthusiasm was so contagious that it prompted other students to spontaneously call out Ukrainian foods they would like to sample, requesting that we make some in class. Similarly, Gaby reflected that her favourite part had been making pysanky [Ukrainian Easter eggs] with the class, just as the characters had done in the story.

During the week, the children engaged in a series of activities, such as exploring the symbolism in pyskany designs in traditional, symmetrical patterns, pictures and colours, designing their own pysanky on paper, and transferring their designs onto hollowed eggshells. Finally, they participated in a workshop in which Gaby’s mother, along with other members of the school’s Ukrainian community, came into school to provide the students with an experience of the traditional technique for making pysanky. The translingual picturebook acted as a springboard to promote the sharing of cultural knowledge in the classroom (Si‘ilata et al., 2023), while harnessing the cultural knowledge within the class and community (Brouwer & Daly, 2022). Gaby was not only excited to see her lived experiences reflected in the picturebook but was also very enthusiastic about sharing this aspect of her identity with her classmates.

 

Fostering interculturality

As well as being a mirror in which Gaby saw herself reflected, the picturebook also served as a sliding door, through which other students could step through and experience aspects of Ukrainian culture. Primarily centred around the five Fs of culture (Myers, 2025), the familiarity and accessibility of the topics such as foods and festivals encouraged students to reflect on their own cultural identities, leading to a consideration of similarities and differences across cultures (Naqvi, McKeough, et al., 2013). An example of this was a spontaneous conversation, transcribed below, that arose while reading the pages pertaining to the Ukrainian tradition of decorating pysanky.

Alex: ‘Well, in Russia we have the same [tradition of painting eggs], but we don’t take out the part from inside. We just, like, paint it, and then on the Easter day we take it off and eat it’.
Nicolás: ‘In Romania we like, get it and try to like chocarlos [bang them together] and if one broke the other one wins’.
April: ‘One day I went to Germany to see my primas [cousins], and it was Easter and we went to sleep, and the Easter Bunny gave us chocolate’.
Joe: ‘In the book, it said they paint eggs with hot paint’.
Grace: ‘Maybe it’s a different tradition from the Ukraine people because it’s not so similar in Spain. In Spain, you just like, hide the eggs, and you need to find them and there’s a surprise’.

For Nicolás, Alex and April, this picturebook acted as a springboard to reflect on their own cultural experiences (Lee, 2021). Grace was also able to consider an event from diverse cultural perspectives, contemplating how traditions might vary across cultures. At the beginning of the week, the concept of diverse cultural realities had been difficult for children to grasp, evident in their initial classifying of certain images from the book as ‘not normal’. Yet the picturebook facilitated the act of decentering, with the above conversation demonstrating ‘a willingness to suspend one’s own values, beliefs and behaviours, not to assume that they are the only possible and naturally correct ones’ (Byram et al., 2009, p. 23).

 

Promoting metalinguistic awareness and positive attitudes

The translingual picturebook also acted as a window through which children in an ELT setting could gain insight into languages beyond English, offering alternative perspectives on how languages work while fostering curiosity and enthusiasm for linguistic diversity. As an initial pre-reading activity, the children were shown an image from the picturebook that depicts a poster of the Ukrainian alphabet alongside a poster showing how to say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in Irish (see Figure 5). On this poster, the characters had added post-its with the Ukrainian translation to support Darynka’s welcome into their Irish classroom, where English and Irish Gaelic function as the primary languages of schooling. When discussing what they noticed about the image, most of the children were able to identify the Ukrainian language but required support to recognize the translanguaging with Irish. This prompted a discussion about why these two languages had been placed together, providing an opportunity to introduce contextual information about both Ireland’s linguistic landscape (Landry & Bourhis, 1997) and its response to the Ukrainian refugee crisis, contexts about which students in this international ELT setting were largely unaware.

 

Figure 5. Verso of opening 4 of I Want to Speak Ukrainian
Used with permission from the author and illustrator

Once conscious of the integration of both Ukrainian and Irish throughout the translingual picturebook, students relied on their growing metalinguistic knowledge across languages to explore I Want to Speak Ukrainian. Initially, this began with an investigation into the alphabets, with children making observations and connections across languages (Gkaintartzi & Triantou, 2023). For example, the similarities between the diacritical marks in the Irish words ‘níl’ and ‘tá’, and the familiar tildes in Spanish, led many children like Lavender to theorize that ‘maybe that’s so you know how to pronounce it’ in Irish. Similarly, for the Ukrainian alphabet, students used their existing language knowledge to inquire into how languages work (Daly et al., 2022). For example:

Charlie: ‘There is a letter that looks like a three. Maybe it makes a tres [three] sound’.
Alex: ‘I know the second [letter]. I think that it makes the letters like sound more soft. It’s not like, for example, n, [it’s] like ñ’.
Charlie: ‘Why does one letter have one taller and one smaller with two?’
George (in response to Charlie): ‘It’s mayuscula y minuscula [Capital and lower-case letters]’.

After this initial exploration, students continued to make connections across languages to attempt to decode unfamiliar words in both Irish and Ukrainian. Continuing with the example from Figure 4, George looked for similarities with known languages like English, noting that ‘it puts here ‘tak’ like talk’, while Alex, whose home language is Russian, used a mix of Russian and English, explaining that ‘I know that Ні/ni sounds like no. Так/Tak is very similar to да/da, which is yes in Russian, and I know that Ukrainian and Russian are very similar’. Conversely, Grace whose only known engagement with the Chinese language had been during a previous interaction with a Chinese/English translingual picturebook, theorized that the words might have something to do with feeling welcome as ‘in the poster it said ‘haun ying ni’ [welcome] and there’s a ‘ni’ in there’. Other students, like Colette, relied on the pictures for comprehension support, using the smiling faces to deduce that the Irish phrase could mean ‘I’m feeling happy, sad’.

Regardless of their strategies, the children displayed significant curiosity and enthusiasm for exploring unfamiliar languages, both the featured language of Ukrainian, but also the less frequently referenced language of Irish Gaelic. These attitudes continued to be displayed throughout the week in the consistently high levels of engagement and participation during the language activities, in which English was repositioned as the medium through which learners could explore their own and others’ languages. While I had expected the children to focus more on the Ukrainian language, given the title, the interweaving of multiple languages within the translingual picturebook not only enhanced metalinguistic awareness (Domke, 2024), but also fostered an interest in and appreciation of a broader range of world languages (Zaidi, 2020).

 

Developing empathy towards language learning experiences

Initially, although there was an overwhelmingly positive response to the linguistic activities related to the picturebook, some students showed resistance to the general need to learn Ukrainian beyond this intervention. Charlie, for example, maintained that while displaced children living in Spain would need to learn Spanish, there was no need to reciprocate the action, insisting that ‘[the countries] are far away’ and additional languages are not needed as the official and most spoken languages are Spanish and Basque. This sentiment was supported by other students in the class, who did not immediately see the need for learning Ukrainian beyond educational or travel purposes. Yet interactions with the translingual picturebook facilitated a shift in perspective towards a more inclusive and humanistic view of language learning. Through the example of Leila and her classmates, who made a concerted effort to learn snippets of Ukrainian in order to make their new classmate feel welcome, we were able to engender discussion about the realities and needs of both voluntary and forced migrants, promoting critical conversations in ELT (Vehabovic, 2021), while fostering sensitivity and empathy towards refugee experiences (Dolan, 2014a; Lowery, 2024). As these dialogues unfolded, Charlie began to view language learning as a reciprocal, altruistic act, finally suggesting that if, like the story, we had new students join our class who were not from Spain, ‘then they can learn a language, and we can learn their language’. This change in thinking demonstrated development of empathy towards the language learning experience for children experiencing forced or voluntary migration (Daly, 2021).

Students were also supported in creating their own working theories surrounding the impact of language (Daly et al., 2022), with many students noting how ‘sharing languages’ can make a difference in the face of forced displacement. During a pre-reading activity, several students like Grace theorized that maybe Darynka and Leila were friends but Leila ‘didn’t know the language so then [Darynka] taught her, and now they became best friends forever because she taught her the language of Ukraine’. As well as recognizing the importance of helping new students learn the community language, students gained a growing sense of reciprocal responsibility that values and honours the linguistic identities. When questioned why Leila should learn Ukrainian, a unanimous chorus of ‘because she’s her friend’ filled the classroom. The children perceived the act of reciprocal language learning as an important way to foster meaningful relationships with people who may not initially speak the same language as them.

 

Figure 6. Verso of opening 6 (cropped) of I Want to Speak Ukrainian,
used with permission from the author and illustrator

The picturebook gave the children a platform to put their working theories of using language to establish genuine human connections into practice. With the help of this translingual picturebook as a resource, students like Grace proudly stated that she now knows ‘how to count to three in Ukrainian! Odyn, dva, try … and now to four!’. This enthusiasm was echoed amongst the class when April’s spontaneous outburst of ‘I want to learn Ukrainian’ (in response to the image in Figure 6) was met by a series of ‘yes’, ‘and me’, and ‘me too’. The positive impact of the class’s enthusiasm towards inclusive language learning was evident in Gaby’s response when she looked at me and noted, ‘it seems like everyone wants to learn Ukrainian’, punctuated with a huge grin from ear to ear.

 

Conclusion

This paper has explored how 7–8-year-old students in an English-medium classroom in Spain responded to a translingual picturebook with elements of Irish and Ukrainian languages and cultures. Findings from five one-hour sessions with dialogic readings of I Want to Speak Ukrainian and accompanying activities showed that the picturebook supported both children with a connection to the Ukrainian language and culture, as well as children from the host community with less familiarity with Irish and Ukrainian. For Ukrainian children, the use of the picturebook as a pedagogical vehicle affirmed their linguistic and cultural identities, fostering enhanced levels of pride, confidence and participation in the classroom. Such interventions are particularly pertinent in response to the Ukrainian refugee crisis. Seeing themselves reflected in the literature within their new environment conveys a powerful message to displaced Ukrainian children and their families that ‘they, their language and their culture are valued by the educational contexts and community in the country in which they now live’ (Daly & Limbrick, 2020, p. 3).

For students less familiar with Ukrainian culture, engagement with the picturebook provided valuable opportunities to enhance intercultural understanding. Participants not only noticed similarities and differences across cultures but were also encouraged to briefly decentre their lived cultural experiences to acknowledge diverse cultural realities. Regardless of the participants’ prior knowledge of the Ukrainian or Irish Gaelic languages, the translingual nature of I Want to Speak Ukrainian supported the development of metalinguistic awareness across languages by offering opportunities to compare their linguistic repertoires. It also appeared to cultivate positive language attitudes, such as curiosity and enthusiasm towards linguistic diversity. Moreover, engagement with the picturebook fostered children’s empathy towards refugee experiences. The critical discussions it prompted surrounding the needs of displaced children enabled students to begin to develop their own theories of the humanistic value of language learning. These reflections resulted in an increased awareness of how children, even as young as 7 to 8 years old, can make a positive impact on the lives of those experiencing forced migration, both by trying to learn about their languages and cultures, as well as teaching them about their own.

Future research could extend this study across a broader range of ELT contexts and age ranges, with more sustained engagement in linguistic and intercultural activities through translingual picturebooks. Recognizing the diverse linguistic profiles of ELT learners, subsequent work might examine linguistic and cultural exploration from a range of translingual picturebooks that both reflect the students’ multilingual and multicultural realities, while also exposing them to diverse linguistic and cultural experiences. Considering the scarcity of such resources, future research could also explore the co-creation of translingual and transcultural picturebooks (see Seals et al., 2020), with particular attention to impact on identity formation, language attitudes, and intercultural awareness. Finally, while my study does not focus on home-school connections, the vignette highlighting Gaby’s enthusiasm in sharing her language and culture alongside fellow members of the school’s Ukrainian community, indicates the potential for similar benefits amongst other displaced children. Further investigations could focus on ways that schools and communities engage with translingual picturebooks as opportunities to share, develop and celebrate linguistic and cultural knowledges and the extent to which this supports inclusive integration across global contexts.

To conclude, this research has shown that we need to use translingual picturebooks both for displaced students to see and hear themselves in the classroom literature, but also for students in the host communities to gain insight into the language and cultures of their new classmates. The study demonstrates the pedagogical potential of translingual picturebooks in a multilingual classroom context and reveals that such picturebooks can function concomitantly as mirrors affirming linguistic and cultural identities, windows into diverse languages and language learning motivations, and sliding doors to engage in intercultural encounters.

 

Bibliography

Breathnach, Bláithín & Myers, Lindsay. (2022). I Want to Speak Ukrainian. Bláithín Breathnach and Lindsay Myers.

 

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