Llama Llama

The first time I heard a Llama Llama book being read was my wife reading the Ukrainian version to our daughter. Ukrainian is a very melodic language and sounds lovely in verse, which is why I just assumed the book was originally written in Ukrainian. I back translated the main line, Llama Llama red pyjama, into English and thought, no way that’s the name of a children’s book. It rhymes and flows nicely in Ukrainian. It’s halting in English. Obviously a few seconds on the internet was all it took to realise that it was, in fact, written in America. But really, the Ukrainian translation is beautiful linguistically. The original just isn’t. I started looking at a few more of the books in the series, and it became more disappointing. Every book is temper tantrum after temper tantrum. Papa Llama is conspicuously absent. I ended up coming across a well written critique of the series. What sums it up for me is: One has to wonder if these books are meant for children or adults. Adults read…