| The Bilingual Brain by Albert Costa review – enlightening and astonishing |
[11 Feb 2020|07:00am] |
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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/11/the-bilingual-brain-albert-costa-language-review Does speaking more than one language alter your brain? The findings from a lifetime of research are revelatoryOver the past century, perceptions of bilingualism have swung from one extreme to the other. For much of the immediate postwar years, it was thought that a toddler’s brain would struggle to cope with two languages (it would handicap school progress, experts said, and some even believed it could lead to schizophrenia). But from the 1960s onwards, increasingly scientific research (coupled, perhaps, with a greater appreciation of cultural difference) pushed the pendulum a long way in the other direction. It’s now fairly common to hear some extraordinary claims about the benefits of bilingualism. Albert Costa (a Catalan-Spanish bilingual) died last year, and this book is a great testimony to his lifetime of research into the subject. Although peppered with a few technical aspects of neuroscience, it’s very readable: the prose is gentle, anecdotal, witty, personal and – despite the many controversies – balanced. He doesn’t deride monoglots (they have advantages too), but simply invites us to wonder what happens if you double up on what is already an extraordinary human ability – language. Continue reading...
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| The Bilingual Brain by Albert Costa review – enlightening and astonishing |
[11 Feb 2020|07:00am] |
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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/11/the-bilingual-brain-albert-costa-language-review Does speaking more than one language alter your brain? The findings from a lifetime of research are revelatoryOver the past century, perceptions of bilingualism have swung from one extreme to the other. For much of the immediate postwar years, it was thought that a toddler’s brain would struggle to cope with two languages (it would handicap school progress, experts said, and some even believed it could lead to schizophrenia). But from the 1960s onwards, increasingly scientific research (coupled, perhaps, with a greater appreciation of cultural difference) pushed the pendulum a long way in the other direction. It’s now fairly common to hear some extraordinary claims about the benefits of bilingualism. Albert Costa (a Catalan-Spanish bilingual) died in 2018, and this book is a great testimony to his lifetime of research into the subject. Although peppered with a few technical aspects of neuroscience, it’s very readable: the prose is gentle, anecdotal, witty, personal and – despite the many controversies – balanced. He doesn’t deride monoglots (they have advantages too), but simply invites us to wonder what happens if you double up on what is already an extraordinary human ability – language. Continue reading...
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| Picture books for children – reviews |
[11 Feb 2020|08:00am] |
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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/11/childrens-roundup-the-last-tree-emily-haworth-booth-song-of-tree-coralie-bickford-smith Flora and fauna loom large as authors incorporate issues around the climate crisisTrees are everywhere in picture books, almost as familiar as the sight of children playing in their branches in real life. Think of Max joyously tree-swinging in Where the Wild Things Are or the verdant woods of The Gruffalo. This year, however, as discussion around the role of trees amid the climate crisis continues apace, forests move from backdrop to cover stars. In Emily Haworth-Booth’s The Last Tree (Pavilion, 6 Feb), a group of friends find the perfect forest to set up home. But as they become more domesticated – building houses, busying themselves with indoor chores – they grow increasingly distanced from nature, and one another. When they decide to chop down the last tree, fittingly it’s the children who make them see sense. Haworth-Booth has a background in graphic novels (she won the 2013 Observer/Jonathan Cape/Comica graphic short story prize) and here uses the form particularly effectively to illustrate the different squabbling families. At times mimicking the scrawly, colouring-in style of children, her charming drawings also emphasise how key the perspective of young people is in both her fable, and our relationship with the natural world. Continue reading...
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| The Snow Was Dirty is bleak and uncomfortable - but it's also a masterpiece |
[11 Feb 2020|11:00am] |
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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/11/georges-simenon-the-snow-was-dirty-reading-group Georges Simenon’s remarkable novel manages to make its loathsome protagonist compelling company If you’ve just read The Snow Was Dirty because you were encouraged to do so by the Reading Group, I should both apologise and congratulate you. The apology because, oh god, this book is bleak. The congratulations because it’s also an immortal masterpiece. First, the darkness. In an afterword in the New York Review of Books edition, William T Vollmann says that in this book “Simenon has concentrated noir into a darkness as solid and heavy as the interior of a dwarf star”. Continue reading...
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| Celebrated cartoonist Claire Bretécher dies aged 79 |
[11 Feb 2020|03:15pm] |
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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/11/celebrated-cartoonist-claire-bretecher-dies-aged-79-agrippine French comic-book author behind the character Agrippine covered gender and sexuality with a mordant humour Claire Bretécher, one of the most celebrated French cartoonists of recent decades and the first woman to achieve significant prominence in the genre in France, has died aged 79. Bretécher rose to fame in the 1970s with the comic-book series Les Frustres, (The Frustrated Ones) which tackled issues of gender and sexuality with a mordant and deadpan humour. Continue reading...
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