Category: Bilingual books

Authors Bio

Isgar Bos has written three books for children, “Wally meets Picasso”, “Wally meets Mozart”, and “Wally goes to school”, and he is the finalist in the South West Writers Competition.  Isgar has created the community of Wally which works on bilingual, and audiobooks, and clean ocean activities.

Isgar Bos is an avid sailor and engineer by training and trade. He has worked as an airport designer all over the world for more than a decade. Some years ago Isgar quit his job and set sail with two other sailors on a 2000 mile sailing journey across the Atlantic. It was the feeling of freedom he had never experienced before, which made him decide to start on a venue that he never dared to do: writing books for children in a way that is helpful for them and their parents.

Cover Image

14 September 2010 Press release

New book by Isgar Bos, Wally Goes to School

Wally Goes To School is coming to the book stores on September 15th. What is remarkable is that this book comes in a dual language format only. Asking Isgar why he chooses to only publish bilingual books from now on he replied that the world is getting smaller and that dual language skills will be the norm rather than the exception.

I am a huge fan of the wally meets and wally books and I have no doubts this will be another successful children’s picture book. The book is also available as an audio book,  online book and an animation of the book has been created as well. It is a novelty to bring out a new book in all these formats, which reflects Isgar’s capabilities to capture the future.

Wally goes to school is directed to the young reader and shares the fears and fantasy world of little kids. Wally, a baby whale is afraid to go to school, it is his first day. Although he is an enormous fish he imaged being teased by his school teacher miss Goldfish and his future classmates.

Sample Excerpts

Contact information

Wallymeets… picture books are a successful creation by Isgar Bos. The idea is simple: wally a baby whale meets legends that have been forgotten in modern times. Although we still enjoy the creations of these magnificent creators, their personality is lost. Through his picture books Isgar Bos wants to reintroduce those forgotten legends to children and their parents.  wally meets… educational picture books for children are now available in multiple langauges. As it has been proven that reading to children at a young age in various languages helps the child’s development and easy with learning a new language later. Wally meets books will be available in English Chinese, English Japanese, English  Spanish, English Catalan and English Dutch.

I just spend one hour with an IT sales woman, who sells book applications for the ipad and android. A new world opened for me on books, ebooks and book applications.
I thought that I understood the books and e-books and applications relationships and differences. A book is a printed version and ebooks are a copy of a book in PDF format, Epub format or Mobi format. Ebooks in PDF format are most straight forward, it is scan of a book, an identical copy. Ebooks in Epub and Mobi formats contain the same information as books, but the text and layout maybe different to better suit the screen and especially smaller screens.

Enters the application or short app. An book app, is based on a book but further transformed to add more interactivity and additional information or games. An app is not considered a book, even if it is derived from a book, and an ISBN number isn’t required for an app. Apps are cheaper than ebooks and books, even if the apps is derived from a book. Apps generally cost between $0.99- $2.99, ebooks start at $1.99 and up and the ebooks price is often related to the book price. An other difference is that apps are specifically made for a certain operating system, the IOS operating system from Apple and the Android system from Google. Ebooks can be read on almost all available hardware and operating systems. Apps are mostly designed to work on the ipad and iphone or designed to run on android phones and any other android device such as the Samsung Galaxy.

So a book can be sold as:
1.) Printed book
2.) Ebook (PDF, Epub, Mobi)
3.) App (IOS and Android)
One product transforms into 3 products for three distinct markets with 3 different stores.

A.) Book stores
1.) Barnes and Nobles
2.) Powell’s
3.) Books-A-Million

B.) Online ebook stores
1.) Amazon Kindle store: sells ebooks in the Mobi format
2.) Apple Ibook store: sells ebooks in the Epub format
3.) Barnes and Noble nookbook store: sell ebooks in Epub format
4.) Kobo books store: sells ebooks in the Epub and PDF format

C.) Online apps stores
1.) Amazon Apps store: sells apps for the Android operating system
2.) Apple Apps store: sells apps for the IOS operating system

Kids picture ebooks rapidly become kids book applications, especially for the Ipad because Apple doesn’t have a books store background. Ipad people buy apps and Barnes and Noble people buy ebooks. Amazon has opened its apps store recently, responding to a growing demand for apps. Now we just have to wait when the first color kindle comes out.

Kids books, are a great way to foster kids curiosity and introduce self learning. Books nowadays don’t have to be made out of paper. Kids books can be digital,  interactive, bilingual and have options to record yourself.  Self learning through recording yourself is a great way to stimulate a kids development.  The problem with our society is that we put children to school where we teach them what is right and wrong, killing the kids creativity. See here Ken Robinson ideas about school, speaking at the TED conference.

The great thing about books is that the child gets to choose what topic it wants to discover. Good books for children have no moral statements but are neutral, allowing children to discover their own set of ideas.  Good teaching books help children in self learning via the way information is provided in the book.

And this doesn’t have to be expensive. In my conversations with Mara Balestrini I learned that even with our current mobile phones we can create cheap multi media information that is useful for children and self learning.

Todays writers just create content, which can be put into many different media formats each with its own advantages to foster a kids development and creativity.

Wally meets is working on digital books with a gaming and recording opportunities, to enhance the kids self learning capabilities. Already available are our bilingual books which all include free audio books to learn the pronunciation of words.

We invite you to participate in this design process and tell us what you feel is important in new media books.

Today’s young parents want their child to read chapter books instead of picture books thinking that this enhances the child’s reading skills. Reading a textbook is no better than reading picture books at this young age. Five reasons why you want your child to read a picture book:

Your child wants to read a picture book! Forcing your child to read a chapter book affects your child’s development, because you put unhealthy pressure on the child. Every child develops a skill of determining what it wants and you just crushed it.

Quality picture books develop cognitive skills much better than chapter books do, because the drawings and text together create a story.  Cognitive skills are: perception, memory, judgment, and reasoning, I think the skills you want your child to develop!

Picture books can use more complex words without the child loosing interest and failing to understand, because the images tell the story as well. Chapter books use common words and therefor don’t extent the vocabulary of your child.

Picture books allow introducing complicated concepts, for example the concept of perception in Wally meets Picasso,  whereas chapter books have a simple concept so that the child can understand the story.

Picture books develop a child’s creative skills as the story is told in little words.

If you want successful and happy children that know what they want with well developed skills in the area of perception, memory, judgment, reasoning and creativity, than have your child read the picture book they want.

You can’t deny it: the world is getting smaller and smaller, we are traveling with American airlines across the globe and forget that not everybody speaks English. To be successful your children need to speak more than one language. Young kids have the capacity and interest in learning more languages. Playfully they pick up the sounds and characters. It is no wonder that a recent study indicated that reading multi language books to toddlers enhance the child’s capabilities learning languages. Reading bilingual picture books to your toddler and young child is the most effective and most economical way to teach your child a second language. The wallymeets children picture book series focuses on teaching toddlers and children multi languages. A group of native speakers from around the world dedicate time to translate and edit wally meets children’s books. You are invited to participate in this project, enhancing children’s opportunities in life.

Many readers have asked me, if some Wally children’s picture books can be translated into Spanish and Chinese. Today’s parents put their kids on a Chinese Saturday-Morning-School. Using it as a pre-school tool, parents like reading English-Chinese children picture books to their children. “Chinese characters are little images just like the Wally pictures”, stated one of the parents.

The Spanish population is interested in Spanish English books to help their children becoming bilingual at an early age.

I’m happy to announce that translation activities have started in both languages! It is exiting working with Chinese and Spanish people helping children to be come bi- or even trilingual.

Soon more to come,