On Thursday, February 25, at 7:00 pm, the Clarke Historical Library will host a virtual version of our annual event celebrating children’s books from around the world. The Clarke holds over 1,500 children’s books in languages other than English. Each year, we celebrate language diversity by inviting members of the CMU community to come into the library, both to read and to listen to these stories in the language in which they are written. This year, we are going virtual. We have created recordings of about 30 volunteers reading in Japanese, Turkish, German, Polish, Portuguese, Chinese, French, Spanish, Bengali, and more. For a sample of what you can see, check out the Clarke’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/Clarke_Library/status/1362768116632068101.

For this event, we will play segments of the recordings, and we have invited a Central Michigan University world languages professor to talk about the value of these books in showing how these beautifully illustrated, fanciful stories are found across the globe.

All of the videos will be hosted on a Central Michigan University webpage, which will be announced on Thursday during the program. We will forward that link to this list when it is available.

This presentation is free and open to the public. The event will be broadcast via Central Michigan University’s videoconferencing tool, Webex, and it will be recorded to enjoy at a later time. Registration is required for the event and the shortened link to register is: https://is.gd/CMUBooksAroundTheWorld

Feel free to share this information far and wide!

The Clarke is happy to answer any questions that anyone may have—please contact Bryan Whitledge (whitl1br@cmich.edu).

Have a great day,

Bryan Whitledge

Archivist for University Digital Records

Clarke Historical Library

Central Michigan University

989-774-2159

whitl1br@cmich.edu