Bill Belew has raised 2 bi-cultural kids, now 34 and 30. And he and his wife are now parenting a 3rd, Mia, who is 8.
The Gigantic Turnip by Aleksei Tolstoy is absolutely one of my all-time favorite books to hear read by my daddy … in Japanese!
It would be interesting to read in all the various languages that it has been translated to.
Daddy!? Are you reading this?
The author of the book Aleksei Turnip, um, Tolstoy might have been related to Leo Tolstoy, the guy who wrote War and Peace, a book little girls who are 5 years old would be 6- or 7- or 8-years old by the time they finished reading it.
Leo Tolstoy and his “I am not going to fight you” ideas influenced Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.
Aleksei Tolstoy was disowned by the Russian higher ups and the church (can a church do that?) and he grew up hating kings and the church. Makes sense. But still sad.
I still like his book.
The story is originally in Russian.
It can be read in English, Japanese, Hebrew, and Chinese.
Believe it or not, there are over 3,000 versions of somebody doing something with this famous tale on Youtube.
You can search The Gigantic Turnip or The Enormous Turnip.
But be warned … suddenly you won’t know where to start.
I recommend going to the library. Grabbing the book and your daddy and crawling up on the sofa for the best experience.
Here’s another book review I wrote on Goldilocks and Just One Bear.
Talk to Bill and others about their experiences raising bi-cultural Japanese-American kids.
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