Dual-Language Books as a Red Herring: Exposing Language Use and Ideologies

Dual-language books (DLBs) are often seen as positive resources for biliteracy development, but most contain implicit messages about the status of the languages used. Through a large content analysis of 100 dual-language children's books (DLCBs), across 10 publishing companies, the authors developed a linguistic typology of DLBs in order to expose messages of linguistic hierarchy. In this article, educators are provided a lens for understanding the hegemony of English in DLBs, provided with exemplars of community-based biliteracy development via holistic language use and translanguaging in DLCBs, and invited into a discussion on the vulnerability and compassion that would be required for creating more equity and effectiveness in biliteracy development.