Bilingual or dual language books are a lovely way to bring additional languages into the home and classroom. These types of books promote vocabulary development whilst also fostering cultural and social awareness. You can read these texts aloud or share in their reading with your child/ren and even use them to kick off different writing activities if you wish.
I have provided the following links as a resource of where to find these texts only. I have not independently verified their quality or the accuracy of the translations however I have explored their ranges and found other websites that also recommend them. I receive no commission on any purchases. If you have other favourite sites for bilingual or dual texts please leave their details in the comments below!
US bookstores
https://www.languagelizard.com/
Language Lizard offers bilingual books and audio resources in over 60 languages, multicultural book sets, posters, and other culturally responsive teaching resources for diverse classrooms. Educators can download free multicultural lesson plans to accompany many of the books they carry.
https://www.internationalchildbook.com/
The International Children’s Bookshop’s mission is “To help parents and grandparents in preserving their native language and traditions”. They provide quality juvenile literature, baby books, board books, wordless books, picture books, story and chapter books and music, CDs and DVDs in many languages of the world.
One Third Story is a unique concept whereby picture books start in English and end in a different language. These books are available in French, Spanish, German and Italian and come complete with various educational activities for children aged 4-9. The books are narrated by speakers of their languages and include an activity pack and flashcards to reinforce their learning.
UK bookstores
https://www.little-linguist.co.uk/
The Little Linguist is one of the UK’s leading online bookstores for additional languages. They offer books in over 50 languages with their main product lines being French for children, Spanish for children, Arabic for Children and Chinese for Children. They also have a range of multicultural resources for Early Years and Primary Schools.
Mantra Lingua is an award-winning UK-based publisher of picture books. They have the world’s largest collection of talking printed books – more than 900 – in over 65 languages. They also provide extensive teachers’ notes, wordless Story Cards for retelling, e-books for whiteboards and laptops as well as support material for teachers, parents and librarians.
B Small has a nice selection of French and Spanish introductory picture books and some readers for older children. They ship across the UK except for Northern Ireland.
Acair publishes a wide range of Scottish Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic/English bilingual books for all ages.
https://www.siopagaeilge.ie/collections/childrens-books
An Siopa Gaeilge states that they are “Committed to providing a first-class service to language learners, teachers, parents and all those interested in Ireland’s language and culture”. They have a great range of children’s books which are mainly written in Gaeilge as opposed to dual language texts.
Australian bookstores
https://www.globallanguage.com.au/
Global Language Books have a wonderful collection of books. They state that they service the needs of adults, children, parents, caregivers, childcare, schools, resource centres and libraries and specialise in the C.A.L.D. (Culturally and linguistically diverse) and the LOTE (Languages Other than English) fields. They have a very wide selection of bilingual books.
https://www.lostinbooks.com.au/
Lost in Books is a bookstore after my own heart. They state that their purpose is to “Maintain and transmit mother language(s), enable curiosity about other language worlds, share and produce stories that reflect the full polyglot diversity of Australian society, celebrate Australian multilingualism, and enable multilingual literacies of children and youth so that they can be fully-fledged citizens and participants in both English and their mother tongue”. Wow! They have a lovely range of books for children, teens and adults from a large selection of additional languages.
https://www.abbeys.com.au/abbeys/about-language-book-centre.do
Abbeys has a wide range of dual language texts as well as books in various languages including a nice selection of texts using Indigenous Australian languages.
https://thelanguagepeople.com.au/
The Language People have a fair selection of bilingual or dual language texts in a wide-range of LOTE, including sign language. They also have more formal language learning texts including phrase books, dictionaries, skills and grammar books as well as course books.
https://www.fivesenseseducation.com.au/
Five Senses Education has a small selection of books in Indigenous and different languages. They also have some more formal language learning resources such as dictionaries and workbooks under their ‘Primary’ and ‘Secondary’ banners.
New Zealand – Aotearoa bookstores
Aotearoa Books has an impressive range of titles in the following collections: Māori, New Zealand, Pasifika and Kiwi Connections.
https://www.booksforkids.co.nz/
Books for Kids is a gorgeous shop full of beautiful books including ones about Māori Culture and the Te Reo Māori language as well as bilingual Te Reo Māori books. The owner tells us that their mission is to stock the best books available and I think they might have done just that! They service schools and families around Waikato however being now online they can help families further afield as well.
https://languagemonkeybooks.com/
The Language Monkey produces interactive talking books in Cantonese and Mandarin and a few in Te Reo Māori. There are options to stream or downloadable songs to read along to also.
Nana’s Shed is an independent publisher of bilingual children’s picture books. They pride themselves on writing stories that are meaningful to kiwi kids. Their books contain humour, rhyme and repetitive phrases that children can repeat.
https://www.barefootkids.co.nz/ (Also ships to Australia)
Barefoot Books New Zealand sell books that reflect diverse identities. They have some wonderful titles but you will need to do a little searching to find the bilingual ones, they also provide books that celebrate cultures and promote inclusion.
Matatas strives to bring materials for learning Philippine languages and culture straight from the homeland and Filipino authors all over the globe to share their Filipino heritage with their NZ family, friends and community.
World-wide bookstores
https://www.tulikabooks.com/bilingual-books
Tulika is an independent publishing house that makes dual language picture books in English and Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, Marathi, Gujarati and Bengali languages so that more children are able to access books in languages familiar to them. They have attempted to represent various childhoods, cultural and societal contexts in their wonderful books.
The following stores also have world-wide shipping:
https://www.languagelizard.com/
https://www.internationalchildbook.com/
https://www.internationalchildbook.com/
https://www.siopagaeilge.ie/collections/childrens-books
https://www.globallanguage.com.au/
https://www.abbeys.com.au/abbeys/about-language-book-centre.do
https://www.fivesenseseducation.com.au/
https://aotearoabooks.co.nz/
https://languagemonkeybooks.com/
Mantra Lingua has associated sites for customers outside the UK:
http://de.mantralingua.com (Germany and Central Europe)
http://se.mantralingua.com (Northern Europe)
http://usa.mantralingua.com (North and South America)
