In his earlier books, David Burke, a famous writer, translated the language of American teenagers for an older generation, and explained American idioms for English-language learners overseas. His latest effort targets American children who know little of foreign languages. He has written a series of books based on the observation that fairy tales are widely known across cultures. "We start in English, and as the reader moves forward, the story starts to change into another language." (INSTRUCTION CD: "Once upon a time, there lived a poor girl--nvhaizi--named Cinderella  who was very pretty--piaoliang. The nvhaizi, who was very piaoliang....") Burke has published books of fairy tales with CDs in Mandarin Chinese, French, Italian, German, Hebrew, Japanese and Spanish. A separate Spanish-language version helps teach English to Lain American youngsters. Young readers learn about 20 words at each level, then move to the next level as they read a different fairy tale. "For example, I've taken the story of Goldilocks , and I bring back all the words the kids have learned in Cinderella, and I add 20 more until the ninth level. By the end of the entire series, it will be 100 percent in the target language." Burke says students often think of language learning as dull, but it doesn't have to be. He designed his books with color1ful cartoon-like illustrations  that attract the young readers. He says many people in other parts of the world often speak at least two languages. Americans have a different reputation. "It's a joke in the linguistic  world that's painful, and funny. It's, What do you call a person who speaks three languages? Trilingual.  And what do you call a person who speaks two languages? Bilingual. And what do you call a person who speaks one language? American." Not all Americans are monolingual, of course, but too many Americans are fluent only in English, and he is working to change that. Burke's series of books are intended for   _  knowing little foreign language.
older generation teenagers in Spain Chinese readers American children