This Could Be Your Child’s Favorite Gift for Christmas This Year

I admit, I’m biased, since my son and I created this book with our illustrator-friend. But just look at what other unbiased people are saying about it…

The story behind the book

If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know that the creation of this book was inspired by our first bearded dragon, Fifa. I’ve always loved wordless picture books, and this creative project was also a way to engage with my teenage son more actively in our minority language.

It turned out to be a silver lining in the dark cloud of the pandemic.

Adding to that darkness, though, was the heartbreaking experience of Fifa abruptly falling ill and passing away during the making of the book. In fact, this sudden loss was such a sorrowful shock that it didn’t look like we would carry on with our work to complete it.

But we finally did, turning the book into a tribute to her and to the joy she brought to our family for the two years she was with us.

This was Fifa (on the left) and this is the bearded dragon that followed in her little footsteps, Yogi. We lost Fifa in July 2021 and brought Yogi home, as a baby, that October. He’s now nearly a year and a half old, which makes him a young adult.

An engaging and productive resource

Bearded Dragon, Home Alone is perfect for parents raising bilingual or multilingual kids because the fun-filled story is conveyed through the pictures alone, which means you can share the book with your children in any language you like! What’s more, you can also tailor the telling of the story to your child’s age and ability, whether in a more simple or more sophisticated way—and have the child tell the story to you, too! This means that the book can potentially serve as an engaging and productive resource for promoting your minority language for years to come! (Wordless picture books are such flexible resources for language development that I even use them with my teens and older students by asking them to write out the story for me.)

And the lively story itself is one I bet your kids will love to engage with, again and again…

Bearded dragon is a quiet, mild-mannered little lizard when others are around. But when this spunky reptile is home alone, it’s a very different story! Let the mischief-making begin in this joyful wordless picture book, a fun-filled romp for kids and grown-ups alike! Laughter and language learning guaranteed, in both homes and schools!