Introduction

“The Ribbit-Ribbit Pond is an illustrated multilingual children’s book tackling the issue of refugees and migration. The book tells the story of the Croac-Croac frogs, a group of frogs that has immigrated to the Ribbit-Ribbit frogs’ pond. The narrator of the story is at the same time the main character of the story, a native frog from the Ribbit-Ribbit pond. This character describes the arrival of the Croac-Croac frogs, whose physical and linguistic differences with the Ribbit-Ribbit frogs trouble the main character. The first part of the story associates the idea of “otherness” with the new frogs by pinpointing the physical characteristics that make the new frogs eccentric in the main character’s eyes. But then, the main character realises that the new frogs are actually very similar to the Ribbit-Ribbit frogs and lists all the characteristics they have in common. Finally, the narrator invites the readers to think of the Ribbit-Ribbit pond as a welcoming place where all frogs can live together regardless of their physical and linguistic differences. Through this, the book promotes attitudes of openness, respect, and curiosity & discovery towards other groups.” (Ivan Gonzalez, 2021)

This book was initially written in Spanish and English by Iván Ignacio Parra González as part of his Postgraduate studies in Crosscultural and Applied Linguistics at the University of Sydney under my supervision. You can read a description of the Making of the Ribbit Ribbit Pond here. We then invited colleagues to provide additional translations and worked with a team of technical experts to turn the book into a multilingual e-book.

This book is, in some ways, a work in progress: we invite readers to help us translate the book into additional languages. We will then add these new translations to the e-book.

Ahmar Mahboob
ahmar.mahboob @ sydney.edu.au
February, 2022

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