What a Picture Book Process brings to life...

The Wellenreiter daycare centre in Rostock has set itself the goal of developing a picture book that represents all the languages that are important in the children's group. As you already know, this resulted in the picture book ‘Mello the Cat finds some Friends’.

Equipped with cameras, the children went on a journey of discovery. With a watchful eye and childlike curiosity, they collected impressions and motifs from the daycare centre's surroundings. Piece by piece, the figures emerged and came to life, from imagination to paper. Drafts were worked out, finalised and then discarded, as is the case with creative thought processes. And one central question has accompanied the project from the very beginning: Which languages are meaningful to the children? And: In which languages should the story appear? The answers to these questions can be found in the voices of the children. The result is a picture book that not only tells the story but also represents it: the children's own language with which they identify. The highlight was the children's own reading. Here, the finished picture book was presented to the caregivers and the other children's groups. Each child held ‘their’ story in their own language in their hands.

The project was supported by the Fachstelle Mehrsprachigkeit Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and RAA - Demokratie und Bildung Mecklenburg-Vorpommern e.V. At the symposium "Everyone in? Shaping early childhood education in a diversity-sensitive and anti-discriminatory way", they then presented their project. And as the coordinator told us, the project met with a great response and enthusiasm among the participants. A sign of how important linguistic diversity and creative educational processes are in early childhood centres! It is always great to experience the process behind the picture books and to gain insights into them. How children find, create and have their ideas heard and how multilingualism becomes visible and appreciated throughout the entire process.