Books for Bambini

I've been tagged for another meme by a friend and children's writer. Here's what I have to do:
1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people and post a comment to Vijaya's blog once I've posted my three sentences. (My five people are three of my critique partners, Julie, Kip and Cynthia, and children's writers Mary and Robin.)

Okay, so the book in closest proximity to me is actually a board book for toddlers called Alla Ricerca di Christopher Robin (In Search of Christopher Robin), and since it has a mere 26 pages, I can't exactly tell you what's on page 123.


Next up is a 162-pager, E.L. Konigsburg's From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, a novel for middle grades (ages 9-12). Without further ado, here's what I've found on page 123:

He thought a minute and then said, "I haven't been a tightwad all my life, have I?"

"As long as I've known you," Claudia answered.

"Well, you've known me for as long as I've known me," he said smiling.


I'm in the middle of reading this story--an adventure/mystery about a brother and sister who run away from home and stay at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. The last time I heard this story was when my all-time favorite teacher, Mrs. Smith, read it aloud to our 4th grade class. That was a looong time ago.

While we're on the topic of children's literature, I thought I'd bend the subject around to Italian children's books. Many books for kids here are stories translated from English into Italian. But even stories I was familiar with as a child take on a different bent when they're translated into Italian. Take Puss in Boots, for example.

Here's the cover:

So far, so good. The story goes along as you'd expect it would...the clever cat promises his master fame and fortune in exchange for a pair of boots. Fair enough. The master gives the cat some boots, and the cat finagles a marriage proposal for his master to the king's daughter. Here's the big moment where the master is asking the king for his daughter's hand:

You've got food, drink, the cat (boots included), the master is smiling, the princess is beaming, and even the king looks pleased. Why is the king happy? Not because his daughter is about to get engaged. Nay. Let's have a closer look:

It says that the king was won over by the good manners and apparent wealth of his daughter's suitor. And he also realized that his daughter was, indeed, in love. Awww.

Then the king decides to announce that he will give his blessing for the wedding.

Here we go:

Al termine del banchetto, dopo aver bevuto cinque o sei bicchieri di vino, gli disse: Caro Marchese, sarei felice di avervi per genero. Vi offro in sposa mia figlia!

This happy Hallmark moment translates as: At the end of the banquet, after having drunk five or six glasses of wine, the king said: "Dear Marchese, I would be happy to have you as a son-in-law. I offer you my daughter in marriage!"

Sniff. It brings a tear to the eye, doesn't it? Through wine, all things are possible, I suppose. Especially in Italian kiddy lit.

What Italian Papas are looking for...

Here's a lift-the-flap book that my kids have enjoyed over the years. The title means "Search and Find" and readers have to guess what each family member is looking for, then lift the flap to see if they're correct. Here are some samples of what Italians are searching for...

What's Mamma looking for? A little sanity, maybe? (Perhaps that's just me...)

Oh, yes. Her keys! This I can relate to, unfortunately.
What's the Nonna searching for?
No, it's not someone to cook for (at least not this time). It's....her reading glasses! All the better to spy microscopic smudges of mud on her grandchildren's knees and scrub them into submission.
How about the Papa'? He's looking for something under his jacket on the chair. (I know, it's hard to tell that's a jacket, since a chunk has been peeled off by my 2-year-old). Is he searching for his tie? His cell phone? His Blackberry? The newspaper? Or is he simply on his hands and knees praying for a way to pay for his kids' college education?

The answer to all of these is, of course, no. Especially the college one, as university is practically free here. And I've yet to see a Blackberry in Italy, so that's not it, either. No, ladies and gentlemen, this papa' is searching for...drum roll...

His helmet! (cymbal crash).

Italians love their motorscooters, and they're part of the landscape here. In fact, Italian mammas and papas even bring their kids to school on scooters. The kids don their mini-helmets and cling to their parents from behind like baby koalas. I'm dying to get a picture of this, but I never have my camera with me when I see it.

My dad had a motorcycle for a short time when I was a kid. He wanted to take me for a spin around the block, and my mother said absolutely not. I was crushed. In fact, I think she said absolutely not to the whole motorcycle idea, because my dad sold it after a few months.

My husband has offered to take my girls for a spin on the scooter. I said absolutely not. They're crushed.

I said they could ask me again when they're 30.

New uses for a bidet...

In yesterday's post, I told you that we don't use our bidet...at least not for its intended use. Here are the top four most common uses of the bidet in our house.

Handy-Dandy Bidet Function #1:
toothbrushing spit receptacle...

Handy-Dandy Bidet Function #2:

The Barbie (Sometimes Co-ed) Day Spa... Handy-Dandy Bidet Function #3:

Car/Truck One-Stop Wash...(no drying service available, though. All vehicles will be drip-dried as they are carried throughout the house.)

Handy-Dandy Bidet Function #4:

DVD cleansing station--for all your audio/visual cleanliness needs...

So there you have it.

If you're European, you probably cringed your way through my bidet photo essay. If you're American, you probably thought: Cool! My kids would love this.

Mine sure do.

Are Italian children geniuses?

I'd always known the time would come when I wouldn't be able to help my kids with their homework--when they start taking courses like high school chemistry, for example. So you can imagine my surprise when my ignorance showed up early--this year, in fact. With my 2nd grader. Ouch.

I do speak Italian, although I certainly don't speak like a native. But some things had me stumped this year. In the page below, my daughter divided up sentences into the parts of speech: subject, predicate and "expansion." Maybe it's me admitting my ignorance on a public forum, but I've never heard the term expansion used as a part of a sentence. So when my daughter asked me to help her with her homework, my response was, "Huh?" My daughter looked at me as if to say: "Didn't you learn anything in second grade?"
Luckily, she had the following page in her notebook, explaining that an expansion is the where, when, how and what of the sentence. "Oh," I said, trying to redeem myself in my daughter's eyes. "The expansion is the object of the sentence." She just rolled those eyes and shook her head. "Expansion it is, then," I said.

Then they started diagramming sentences, and naming the function of each word. In the page below, my daughter has written: Una cantante canta, which means "A singer sings." She labeled the subject and predicate, then went on to note that:

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Una= indefinite article, feminine, singular (thank God we just have plain 'ol a or an)

cantante (singer)= common noun, feminine, singular (thank God--again--that all our nouns are androgynous)

canta (sings)= verb (later in the year she goes on to add labels like "third person, present tense")

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Come on, people--definite vs. indefinite articles in 2nd grade? I don't know about you, but I never did this kind of thing when I was seven.

But that's okay--I know my parts of speech as well as the next Italian mamma, and was able to help her with this homework assignment.

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Then came the nouns. Italian nouns that end with an "o" are masculine, and those that end with an "a" are feminine. Usually. But not always. And those exceptions are the ones that the teacher gives for homework, of course, sending me back to the dictionary time after time. By now, my daughter's wondering if I've ever been to school at all.

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Then they started learning about the different verb tenses--the next page shows present and future. Again, simple enough--I know these. What I don't know is this crazy past tense called passato remoto that they use for things that happened a looooong time ago. You see it a lot in stories, and it's totally different from the infinitive form of the verb. Northern Italians don't use it when they speak, so I rarely hear it. I know, I know....I should read more.

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And then you've got the subjunctive tense, as in: "If I were really fluent in Italian, I wouldn't have to keep running to the dictionary to help my second-grader with her homework." In that sentence, were is in the subjunctive. The only problem is that Italians use this tense for a gazillion other situations that we don't. For example, if I say "She is at home, " or "I think she is at home," I've used "is" in both cases. Not so in Italian. They use the subjunctive for the second sentence, because it expresses doubt. Just like I'm starting to doubt whether I sound half-way intelligent when I speak Italian, because I frequently forget to use the &$%/£* subjunctive tense.

Now, to cement my ignorance even further, I made the mistake of expressing my surprise when my daughter's teacher taught them to write in cursive at the end of 1st grade. When I was a teacher in the U.S., we introduced cursive in 3rd grade. Yup. 3rd grade.

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And writing in pen. When did you first write in pen at school? I seem to think it was middle school, if I remember correctly. Here they use a special pen with the ink on one end, and a white-out type tip on the other end for covering up mistakes. And they use this pen for math. Mercy.

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So then I get to thinking, why are Italian bambini learning all of this stuff so early? Are they geniuses? And then it hit me: There are no spelling tests in Italian schools.

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That's it!

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Italian is a phonetically regular language, so what'cha see is what'cha say. American kids have to slog through all of those word families and rules and phonics exercises so they can pass that spelling test every Friday.

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Whew! I felt better already. We're not so slow, after all. Italians may have their tricky verbs, but we've got to figure out the difference between threw and through, pair, pare and pear, and ate and eight.

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No wonder American kids don't write in pen.

Sing, sing a song...

On Saturday, we went to our second-grader's end-of-the-school-year show. The theme this year was songs sung in Triestino, the local dialect. Triestines have a love/hate relationship with their dialect--most of them think Triestino sounds uneducated, yet they find it difficult to speak in Italian with friends and family--the dialect just sounds friendlier, and it's indispensable when you're telling jokes (jokes in Italian just don't have the same delivery).

Triestines don't want their children to speak, read, or write the dialect in school, because it might interfere with their Italian. However, this time the school made an exception.

In this photo, you can see the signs made by the children with the titles of famous Triestine songs and drawings of landmarks--the tram, the lighthouse, the castle, and in the upper left hand corner, a cloud blowing the Bora, Trieste's famous gale-force wind.
(This is off-topic, but the photo below is to show you that the windows is this gym were all closed. And it must have been 1,000 degrees in there. But we wouldn't want a draft to sneak in and cool anyone off, now...would we?)

Okay, back to the dialect and singing...

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The children sang at least 10 Triestine songs that everyone in the audience knew--they aren't children's songs, necessarily--some recount a piece of Triestine history, some express an undying love for all things Triestine, and some are just meant to make you laugh.

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Here are a few choice lyrics that would never make the American elementary school show circuit:

1. Da un litro de quel bon= Give me another liter of that good wine.

2. E non la me vol più ben, la prega Dio che crepo, inveze stago ben!= She doesn't love me anymore, she prays that I'll die, but I'm feeling fine!

3. E mio marì xe bon, el xe tre volte bon, ma solo la domenica me onzi col baston= My husband is a good man--he only beats me on Sundays.

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That last one is an especially lovely sentiment, isn't it? (!)

On the historical end, there were songs that make fun of Austria (more specifically, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire that ruled Trieste for 500+ years), and songs that tell of Istrian cities that used to be part of Italy, and are now Croatian--a touchy subject for Italians who had to leave their Istrian homes after the war.

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And interesting to me, there's a famous song about wanting to go to America, no matter type of transportation one might have to resort to--even if it's by skateboard, driving a hearse, or on the back of the horse belonging to your mother-in-law.

Considering there's an ocean between Italy and America, we can gather that whoever wrote that song was either geographically challenged, or really wanted to leave Italy.

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Each grade also performed a dance that represented one of the many cultures that has passed through Trieste's ports. For example, Greek sailors used to whip out their mandolins and dance on the docks. The photo below is my daughter's class performing a Hebrew dance--many Jews sought refuge in Trieste during World War II, including Albert Einstein.

By the time the last song was sung, the parents and grandparents were all clapping and grinning and singing along with gusto, and some were even dancing in the aisles. Even though they don't want the dialect to be taught in school, I could tell that hearing their children singing the old familiar songs in Triestino was music to their ears.

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That's always been one of the things I've loved about Italians--they'll take any excuse to dance and sing. I remember when I first came to Trieste in 1993, I'd go out with friends (American, Australian, and English), and it was always more fun when our Triestine friends joined us. We'd be in a bar with 100 people, and for whatever reason (wine being the most likely culprit), someone would start singing a Triestine song, and the whole bar would join in. I remember after a particularly raucous round of singing, our Triestine friends asked us to sing a song in English that we all knew.

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We were stumped.

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All we could come up with were TV show theme songs--The Brady Bunch, Gilligan's Island, and the like.

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Oh, well.

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So my children will grow up singing about good wine and the story of a man named Brady...you just can't get more well-rounded than that...

Mamma Mia!

Since we just celebrated Mother's Day (La Festa della Mamma), I thought I'd give you the lowdown on what Italian mammas are really like.

Here's a photo of my mom (on the left) and my mother-in-law (on the right) taken last year when my parents came to visit. My parents and parents-in-law get along really well with each other, in spite of the fact that they don't speak each other's language (or is it because they don't speak the same language...?).

Anyhoo...let's review the stereotypes of the typical Italian mamma:
1. great cook
2. insists everyone eats, even after they're full
3. rules the roost--no one argues with mamma once she's made up her mind
4. loves her children above all else

Well, like many stereotypes, these are all...absolutely true.

There's a saying in Italy that goes like this: La mamma è sempre la mamma, which means: Your mother will always be your mother. Now, an American might interpret that as "Your mother will always love you and be there when you need her."

What it means to an Italian is: Your mother will always be there for you. Literally. Even when you don't need her help. Just look over your shoulder--'cause there she is.

I once saw a documentary in the U.S. on Italian mammas and their mammone--which translates as "mamma's boys." They interviewed couples where the man was Italian and the woman either American or English, and every single girlfriend or wife complained about how their boyfriend's/husband's mother hovered over them like a helicopter. One man lived in the town next to his mother's town, and he'd put his bag of dirty laundry on the bus, the mother would pick it up at the bus stop in her town, wash his clothes, iron them, and then send them back via the bus.

My first reaction to this was: Give me a break! My second (more rational) reaction was: Hmmm...I wonder if I could get my mother-in-law to do this?

In interacting with other moms my own age, I've learned a few golden rules of Italian mamma-hood.

1. Sweating is bad.
My daughter took a gym class a few years ago, where the kids would run around, get a little sweaty, and then the moms would pick them up. When I came to get my daughter, I'd greet her, ask what games they played, and take her home. Big faux pas. Little did I know that I was supposed to go to the locker room, feel her sweaty forehead, make a tsk tsk sound with my tongue and shake my head while I say: "Sei tutto sudata," which means "You're all sweaty." Then I was supposed to change her undershirt, put on a fresh shirt over that, comment again about how sweaty she was, whip out the hair dryer and dry her sweaty bangs. Then, and only then, could I take her home. This rule leads us to the next one:

2. No sweating allowed if there's any sort of breeze or draft whatsoever.
Here's my line of thinking: If it's hot outside and you're sweaty, it's nice when a breeze comes along to cool you off. Here in Italy, however, this leads to instant pneumonia. Italian bambini wear undershirts even in the summer, in case they sweat. Huh? you might say, Wouldn't the fact that they're wearing an extra shirt make them sweat even more? Correct. But the thinking here is that if your child sweats, the first line of pneumonia defense is the undershirt. You see, a breeze would blow against the dry outer shirt, while the undershirt would absorb the sweat. Then, in a practiced 3-second maneuver, your mother would change your undershirt so the process can start all over again.

3. Your child may starve if not fed every few hours.
If my 5-year-old is not eating her pasta, my mother-in-law will pick up the fork and offer to feed her. If a toddler refuses his snack, his mother (or grandmother--same difference) will chase him around the house, plying him with other snack options. When I used to tell my mom I was hungry right before dinner time, she'd say, "You're supposed to be hungry--it's almost dinner time." When I used to pick up my daughter from gym class, at 5:45 and she told me she was hungry, another mother would overhear and offer her a cookie.

I scoffed at these rules--surely I'd never become an Italian mamma. But then I started sending my kids to school in undershirts even when it was warm outside...I mean, what would the teachers think of my undershirt-less children? What if the other mothers caught on that my children were actually sweating at recess time without the pneumonia blocker? And if my kids announce their hunger in public right before dinner time, I've been known to concede the occasional cookie. I'm just doing it for appearance's sake, I'd tell myself. So the other mothers wouldn't call social services on me.

And then my parents came to visit last year. We were outside our apartment with no Italians in sight, when I told my girls to go in and get a sweater. My mom looked at me like I was from another planet. "But Natalie," she said. "It's 75 degrees outside."

Eep. She was right. I'd told my daughters to put on a sweater because a slight breeze was blowing. Argh! Although I'm not a full-fledged Italian mamma, I'm not a 100% American mom anymore, either. I am somewhere in between.

But once my kids are grown, they're doing their own laundry...

One strike, and...the kids are home

Here's a photo of my daughter's school (the burnt-orange-colored building). When this photo was taken, students were inside--some walking the halls, some at their desks, some probably throwing the odd spitball or two. Teachers were teaching. And disciplining. And perhaps dodging spitballs.

But not today.

Today there's a scioppero. If you've lived in Italy, you're nodding your head right now saying, "Ah, another scioppero."

Scioppero means strike, and they are regular occurances here. Train workers go on strike. Nurses go on strike. Everyone and his brother goes on strike. And, of course, teachers go on strike.

Strikes are always announced ahead of time, both in the newpapers, on television and websites. So if you want to take the train to Rome on Monday, you check the Italian railway website Monday morning to make sure your train is still running. And if it's not? Well, then, you go to Rome on Tuesday. Pazienza (patience), as the Italians would say.

However, we did not realize that today was a teacher strike day until we got to school with the kids. Apparently, a notice had been posted in the school foyer, which we didn't see yesterday. This is perhaps due to the fact that the notice was tacked to a bulletin board along with 15,000 other notices for various summer programs.

But didn't we hear other parents talking about it? Before school? After school? In the bars? On the street? Italian children don't take school buses, so this means you must drop your kids off and pick them up every day--a chance to see and talk with other parents. So why didn't anyone tell us?

Frankly, because a strike just isn't big news here. It might be mentioned in casual conversation, as in: "I'll call you tomorrow and we'll go for coffee. Oh, wait, I can't go tomorrow--I'll be home with the kids--scioppero."

We weren't the only ones who missed the notice--5 other families showed up, read the notice, shrugged, and went home...kids in tow.

So now I have to cancel my writing plan for this morning...I'm sneaking in this blog post while my son naps and my daughters are having a snack. But at least I work from home. I feel for the parents who have to scramble to make other arrangements because they didn't see the strike coming. Actually, "other arrangements" = "take the kids to the grandparents' house" here in Italy, so I guess all's well that ends well.

What would Italy do if the mammas went on strike?

*edited to add:* One of my daughter's teachers lives nearby, and my daughter just came skipping through the door saying she'd been talking to her teacher who was working in her garden.

What? No picket lines? What kind of strike is this? The kind I'd like to go on, that's what kind.

Caution: Bimbo on Board

Here's a "Bimbo on Board" sticker in the rear window of a car. Oodles of Italian cars have these, because there are millions of bimbos in Italy.

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In Italian, bimbo (pronounced "BEEM-bo) is short for bambino, meaning child, in this case.

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Nonetheless, I still refuse to put this sticker on our car, even though we have three bimbi. I'd hate for an English-speaking tourist to see me driving by and assume that I'm the bimbo on board...

More weird Italian baby food

Those of you who read my previous post on weird Italian baby food know that Italian bambini dine on salmon, horse and rabbit. But it's not like I hadn't heard of people eating these things--just not babies.

Then today I went grocery shopping and saw something I'd never seen before. Are you ready? Are you sure? Okay...here it is:


That's right, folks...ostrich. Now, I don't know about you, but I have never heard of anyone eating ostrich, never mind babies. At least not in the U.S. and not in Italy. I bought this pack just to take the photo, but I'm definitely not feeding ostrich to my son.

Even if it does taste like chicken.

The Mediterranean diet for bambini...

We've all heard about how great the Mediterranean diet is for your health. But you may not have known just how early this diet begins in Italy. Except for red wine, babies eat pretty much the same stuff adults do. Here are some examples:

1. olive oil--for babies. Notice that it's made by Nestlè, it's got a kid-friendly blue bear on the label, and it's enriched with extra vitamins. It doesn't taste all that great, but Italian babies don't know that yet. 2. pasta--Italians are serious about their pasta--in any major supermarket, you'll find at least two aisles filled with seemingly hundreds of varieties of pasta. Here's a box of iron/vitamin-enriched pasta recommended for babies 5 months and older. The tiniest pasta available is for 4 month-old bambini and looks like mini-cous cous. 3. fish--You know the Mediterranean diet includes fish, but you may not have known it comes packed in baby food jars. I counted 7 different types of baby food fish, and here's a sampling of salmon with vegetables.

4. rabbit--that's right, as in bunny. I know I'm a hypocrite because I do eat (and love) meat. But bunny rabbits? And does the bunny on the package have to look so darn cute?? But if you think rabbit in baby food jars is odd, check out the next one...

5. horse--Yup. As in Flicker. Black Beauty. Trigger. And that pony you always wanted as a child.

We already had the olive oil and pasta at home for our 14-month-old. But I actually went out and bought the salmon, rabbit and horse so I could take these photos in the privacy of my own home and not look like a looney toon taking photos of baby food in the supermarket.

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When I unloaded the groceries, I told my (Italian) husband: "Honey, get a load of this!" His reaction? He picked up the horse jars and said, "Great stuff--horse meat is really tasty." And he wasn't even smiling...he was completely serious.

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How did I not know this when I married him ten years ago? It's just not the kind of thing you ask before matrimony. You discuss how you'll discipline the kids, sure. And how many kids you'd like to have, of course. But the question of whether or not we'd feed our kids horse and/or rabbit from a jar just never came up.

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My husband is out in the kitchen now making lunch for the kids (since Italians all come home mid-day for lunch). I'd better get out there and hide those baby food jars...