Names Like Chameleons: Language and Identity (Read-Aloud)

The colorful picture books of this read-aloud explore the changing names and languages we use depending on our environment, which in turn affect the meaning, history, and heritage that those words carry. In Wanjiku, Child of Mine by Ciiku Ndung’u Case, a young Gikuyu girl moves from the Kenya countryside to attend a boarding school in Nairobi, where people call her Catherine, and children are expected to figure things out on their own. But at home, she is again Wanjiku, daughter of the Gikũyũ people, who loves to hear her grandmother Cũcũ tell the origin story of her name. On the Eastern Plains of Taiwan, in Erica Schlaikjer’s Wild Greens, Beautiful Girl, a young girl learns that the spiky, stalky weed she is about to pull out has a different name in the Amis language: dadugum. Her ina teaches her about the flowering shrub and its many uses, showing her to appreciate the bounty of nature and the beauty of her indigenous Taiwanese identity. Emceed by Cinnamongirl, this lyrical read-aloud will serve as a gentle reminder that what we call things matters.