Another Tongue

A rollicking, relatable introduction to the joys and frustrations of learning a new language.

Your first language is often called your “mother tongue.” It’s solid and familiar, just like the tongue inside your mouth; it feels like home.

But what happens when you go to a new place, with a different mother tongue? Muddling through words you can’t understand can be mystifying, overwhelming. Sentences sound strange, letters may even look different. But don’t give up: with plenty of practice and a lot of mistakes, you can end up with two tongues!

Yevgenia Nayberg’s humor-infused prose and larger-than-life illustrations speak playfully to the complexity of learning a language, a process she went through herself when she emigrated from Ukraine. Kids who are currently finding their way in a new language will surely see themselves in Another Tongue, but no kid will be left out of this funny, approachable take on the way the words we use, and the way we use them, changes how we see the world.