Juvenile (K-12) Collection: Foreign-language books

A brief guide to the Marriott Library's Juvenile Collection.

Finding foreign-language books in the Juvenile Collection

The Juvenile Collection includes over 3100 books with text at least partly in a language other than English, just over 6% of the collection.  These range from learners' dictionaries (Let's learn Japanese picture dictionary, call number 495.6 G6532le; The first thousand words in Russian, call number 491.7 A5129fi) to translations of beloved English-language titles (Prosciutto e uova verdi [Green eggs and ham in Italian], call number 372.412 S496gr I8sa; Przygody Hucka [The adventures of Huckleberry Finn in Polish], call number 817.4 C625h P6ry) to non-fiction works in their original language (Les questions des tout-petits sur la mort, call number 306.9 A89q; Malintzin : la noche de Marina, call number 921 M3372ba).  Over 250 of these books are bilingual, with text in English and a foreign language (Niwechihaw = I help [Cree and English], call number 372.412 N6243ni; Dzání yázhí naazbaa' = Little Woman Warrior Who Came Home [Navajo and English], call number 979.1 P2724dz). There are even three books with text in three languages: Pie-biter = Comepasteles = 派王阿 [English, Spanish and Chinese], call number 372.412 M1332pi 1998; Nantu, Aujujai = Nantu y Auju = Nantu and Auju [Achuar, Spanish and English], call number 398.2 M4672ma E5小王子 = Le petit prince = The little prince [Chinese, French and English], call number 843.91 S137pe C4hu.

The principal focus is on languages taught here at the University of Utah.  The foreign language most represented in the Juvenile Collection is Spanish, with over 900 titles, followed by French (over 700 titles), Korean (250 titles), Portuguese and German (over 200 titles each), Chinese, Japanese, Italian and Russian (over 100 each). There are smaller numbers of books in Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Latin and 25 other languages.  We have all seven of the Harry Potter novels (call number 823.914 R8842) translated into 13 different languages, and partial sets in an additional six languages.  Other titles available in multiple translations include Le petit prince, which we have in the original French and in eleven other languages, and The Hobbit, which we have translated into eight languages.

To find books in a specific foreign language in our catalog, do a subject search (from the Advanced Search page) for "Spanish language materials" (or "French language materials", etc.) -- be sure to include the quotation marks. Then narrow your results using the Collection facet, on the right side of the screen when looking at search results in the catalog:  clicking on Juvenile Collection (or Marriott Reserve) will restrict the display to items in that collection.  To see only the bilingual books, add "bilingual" to your search ("Korean language materials bilingual").

You can also see spreadsheets of books for the following ten languages (results from the catalog will always be more current):

Use of children's literature in foreign language classes at the college level and beyond

The resources listed here discuss the advantages of using children's literature in foreign language classes for college students and other adult learners.

Some recent acquisitions

Marriott Library Eccles Library Quinney Law Library