S2E3 Little Library: What Do You Call Your Mum?

Join us for a heartwarming new episode of the Learn Play Thrive: Little Library mini-series! Host Linda Harrison sits down with bestselling children's author Ashleigh Barton to explore her latest picture book, What Do You Call Your Mum?

This rhyming story takes readers around the world to discover the many names for "Mum"—from Okaasan in Japan to Tina in Fiji. Ashleigh shares the inspiration behind this "love letter to families," explaining how the story shows that while languages and cultures vary, the nurturing role of a mother figure is a shared human experience. It’s a soulful conversation that highlights how diverse representation in quality children's literature can help create a sense of belonging for every child.

This episode also dives deep into the pedagogy of play and early literacy. Linda and Ashleigh discuss how the book’s rhythmic structure builds phonological awareness and aligns with EYLF V2.0 learning outcomes by fostering effective communication and cultural safety. You'll hear Ashleigh read enchanting snippets from the text and share story-inspired learning experiences—including creating a 'Name Sound Wall' and setting up a 'Finnish Café' for pretend play.

Whether you are an educator looking to acknowledge linguistic diversity or a parent wanting to spark a love for diverse cultures, this episode is packed with practical tips to help the little ones in your life read, play, and thrive! Listen now and share your play-based setups using #LPTLittleLibrary!

Find out more:
https://www.ashleighbarton.com/
https://www.instagram.com/ashleighjbarton/

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Transcript

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Welcome to Learn Play Thrive the podcast, the ultimate early learning podcast for educators and leaders in the sector. Let's learn, play, and thrive together. The Learn Play Thrive podcast was recorded on the land with the Dark and Jung people. We pay our respects to the traditional custodians, past, present, and emerging. Hands up, hands down, we're on Dark and Jung land. A warm welcome to today's episode of Learn Play Thrive's Little Library. I'm Linda Harrison, early education content producer here at Learn Play Thrive, where we're passionate about the power of picture books to ignite young imaginations and foster a lifelong love of literacy and learning in the early years. Today we are embarking on a journey across the world through the pages of a heartwarming new picture book that celebrates the most universal bond of all. It's called What Do You Call Your Mum? This gorgeous story reminds us that in every country around the world are mums, some short, some tall. Though they go by different names, we love them one and all. It is a beautiful celebration of ways to say the word mum in many different languages. And joining me today is the best-selling author behind this love letter to families, Ashley Barton. Ashley, it is such an honour to have you here in the studio. Welcome. Thank you, and hi Linda. It's such a pleasure to be here. I'm so excited about this book. It's very close to my heart. And before we dive into the story, I'd love to share a bit more about our guests. So Ashley Barton is a best-selling children's author from Sydney. And after completing a law degree, Ashley decided she preferred picture books and spent the next six years working in publishing, where she ran marketing and publicity campaigns for internationally renowned authors and illustrators. Now she writes books of her own in between looking after her three small children and freelance copywriting. And Ashley is the author of several acclaimed picture books, including What Do You Call Your Grandma? Which was shortlisted for the 2022 CBCA Book of the Year Awards. And the other CBCA notable picture books of Ashley's include What Do You Call Your Grandpa, How Do You Say I Love You, and Dinosaur in My Pocket. So Ashley, What Do You Call Your Mum is the latest in your series of picture books, Exploring Family Connections. And it's a collaboration with the talented illustrator Martina Hyderic and is published by Harper Collins. The stories plot follows a journey through different countries to discover love letters to mums and families from across the world. So what was the spark that led to this celebration of mothers and culture and language, Ashley? Yeah, well, we started this series um quite a few years ago now with grandpas and then we did grandmas and we moved through end-of-year celebrations and then phrases like saying I love you before we celebrated dads. So of course we had to include mums. I'm biased, of course, since I am one, but mums are truly special people. And I wanted to show you that while there are many different names for mums, the feeling of love and the role of the mother figure is a shared human experience. Absolutely. So let's dive in and talk about the diverse languages that you've included in your story. So your picture book uh actually features Japanese and Hungarian, Finnish, Malay, Turkish, Fijian, and lots more languages. Um, and you've included different names for mothers across culture and these languages. So I'd love for our listeners to hear the rhyme and some of the different languages from around the world that you've woven through the story. So would you mind sharing a few pages for us? Of course, I would be honored. So let's start with a trip to Japan and finish in Fiji. Quick, get ready, she's almost here. Give a wave and cheer, cheer, cheer. No matter what, she's number one. Haiko calls her mum Okasan. Jump aboard, come join the crew, watch for mermaids, pirates too. She'll steer us back to the marina. Lani calls her mum Tina. Oh, such beautiful language. And those words really, I guess when they are read aloud, they highlight that phonological awareness through rhyme, which we talk about a lot in early literacy and early childhood education. And that rhyme is really like a musical cue for the brain, isn't it? You know, helping young children predict what's going to be coming next and it builds that confidence as listeners and, of course, future readers. So I think if we do lean into that early childhood pedagogy here, uh, your story is really a perfect embodiment of that early years learning uh framework outcome five, that where children are effective communicators, because when we're sharing the text of what do you call your mum, we're not just reading the story, of course, we're providing that rich environment for children to engage with those beautiful sounds and patterns of language that you've just read. Exactly. And that's the power of reading aloud with young children. It's not just about decoding words, it's about hearing the language. I wrote the book with a rhythmic rhyming structure because it helps children hear the patterns in language. So when an educator or parent reads these different names with confidence and warmth, they're modeling the spoken language and creating a sense of belonging for children from different cultural backgrounds and for those for whom English might be a second language. So this rhyming structure I set up was very intentional so that even if a word like okassan is new to them, the rhyming word one in the previous line helps children predict the sound and makes it fun to say. But it also means that whoever's reading out loud will have some idea of how to pronounce that foreign word. So I intentionally made this rhyming structure so that everyone can have a crack at pronouncing words they might not have heard before and kind of land as close to pop close to the right pronunciation as possible. So when we wrote these books, not just Mum, but all the books in the series, we did extensive research to make sure we were getting the pronunciations correct. We checked everything with native speakers, but still the rhyme helps me pronounce the words as properly as I can. But yeah, it's not always possible to get it completely accurate, but that rhyme is there to help. So, and this um also helps teach children that languages are different around the world, but they all share the same power to express love. Definitely does, and I love how you've extended that learning at the end of the book, too, with those wonderful information pages. And for those educators or readers who might not yet know how to pronounce the words and also want to know a bit more about the language and the culture, it's a really great anchor explaining exactly where each different word form comes from and gives that little window into the history of that specific language. So it's a great resource for educators and a beautiful way, I guess, to acknowledge that uh linguistic diversity and helping children understand, I think that every language carries an equal weight of history and heritage and heart, doesn't it? Yeah, definitely. And I think this brings us actually well to the stories, themes of cultural and diversity. So again, if we lean back to the EYLF version 2.0, for early childhood educators, it does require us to acknowledge the histories and the cultures and the language of families so that we can build culturally safe early learning environments for young children. So your picture book does include the word Mimi, which is in the Gumbani language, and that's so important for promoting an understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of knowing and being. So, how do the illustrations enrich the many diverse cultures that are represented in your picture book? Yeah, so this is where the visual literacy aspects come in. The illustrations tell more of the story than the words alone. So, Martina, who is so talented and so clever, and she does so much research, um, she includes a lot of cultural details in her illustrations, for example, the cherry blossom plants in Japan, the beautiful architecture in Pakistan, and the different clothing worn by each mum in the story. So she's very deliberately adding in cultural elements into her illustrations, which I think really, really adds to the story. I love that because I think when educators and parents are reading the picture book with young children through that shared reading, they can engage in a deeper discussion about the illustrations. So, you know, you can ask questions like, what do you see that looks different from our home? Or, you know, they they can see the family and the food and all those different natural environments uh that can help relate the story to their own lived experiences. So the picture book is a bit of a mirror into their own family, but then also a window into the wider community. Exactly. So let's now explore those themes of family and love and community. And Ashley, your book really highlights that while the names for mum might change, the presence of a nurturing family and a wider community is so important for a young child's positive well-being. So, how does this picture book help children develop a sense of belonging in their own families and communities? Yeah, I think this um comes down to those extra stories being told in the background. So in the book we see mums and children interacting with their wider worlds, so at their shops or on the beach, walking through their neighborhoods. And this really encourages children to look beyond their own front door. So, for example, when we read about a child who turns to the soil and plants the seeds in Ethiopia, it prompts that young reader to think about their own garden at preschool or home or a community garden, perhaps. A powerful point, Ashley, because I think it really actually speaks to the heart of early childhood development, that idea that young children feel they belong because of the relationships that they have with their family and their neighbourhood, their community and their culture. So for educators and parents, we can use those experiences that you've shared on each page of your picture book to spark discussions about those important roles that mothers and mother figures play in our lives. So whether they are called a me or Yamo or Mimi, these figures are often a child's first connection to their community and their very first sense of home. And by exploring those diverse scenes through the illustrations in the book, we can help children just talk about how their own mother figures support their sense of belonging and help them navigate the world around them. So I think through reading What Do You Call Your Mum, and by talking about those histories and cultures and lifestyles of the different families in the book, we can help children understand too that they belong to multiple groups. So not only their immediate family, but also their local neighbourhood and their broader global community. Absolutely, and that's so important. So let's now share three story-inspired play-based ideas for early educators. Uh, ideas that you can use on plan after reading what do you call your mum? So, one example of a play-based idea based on the book is to bring the theme of language into an early years classroom. Educators could create a name sound wall. So we could invite families to share the names they use at home for different family members. And through this, we could support children's phonological awareness by clapping the syllables of the names together. So, for example, Anu, that's two claps, and Orka San, that's three claps. So this values the home lives of families and makes the curriculum a reflection of the children's real worlds. I love that. And children love those experiences with clapping the sounds, particularly at transition times. Um, yeah, it's a great way to support those early literacy understandings. And another way we could bring the magic of Ashley's picture book into our early learning environments is by using one of my favourite spreads that's in the book, a double-page illustration, which is based in Finland. Um, so we see the beautiful contrast, there's the cold white snow outside the window, and then a mother and daughter are tucked away inside warmly, and they're engaging in some pretend play in the illustrations, and they've set up a shop front. Um, and it's such a relatable moment of connection, and you could recreate this shop front within your early learning settings. So you could set up a bit of a cafe using a large uh recycled cardboard box, and you could cut out a window to create that cafe-style counter, and that's where children could recreate the story through pretend play, and they could serve some takeaway drinks and snacks, just like the little girl within the picture. And you could link it back to that finish setting in the book. So you could add some white cotton wool or fabric to the windowsill to represent the snow in the story, and you could even provide some props like wooden tea sets or pastries, you know, some built ones, or even some real finished treats. And for our third story-inspired play idea today, I also want to draw your attention to another gorgeous double spread, uh, where we see a mother and a child from Syria in the illustration. So they are both sprawled out on the floor and they're deeply immersed in a shared creative world. So they're drawing together on a massive roll of paper, and it's it's such a powerful image of quiet connection but also collective storytelling. So we can create this inviting play provocation uh by laying out a long roll of butcher's paper across the room. And we can elevate this learning experience for young children by carefully arranging drawing materials. So we could offer a bit a rich variety of textures and tones, as we see in the illustrations as well. So think things like uh coloured pencils and vibrant textures or smudgy charcoal and oil pastels. And when we're offering these kinds of drawing tools, we're supporting the EYLF Learning Outcome 5.2, where children can express ideas and make meaning using a range of media. And by providing that visual arts experience too on the floor rather than the tabletop, we're changing that physical dynamic, allowing children to use their whole bodies to reach and stretch and create alongside their peers. So, what do you call your mum is a beautiful and relatable picture book that acknowledges the complexity of families while celebrating the joy of diversity. It's a must-have for any early learning library. And Ashley, thank you so much for joining us today. Oh, thank you so much for having me, Linda. This has been amazing. And we'd love to see your story-inspired play. So please share your photos with us using hashtag LPT Little Library. Until next time, keep reading, playing, and thriving. Thank you for joining us on this episode of LearnPlaythrive the podcast. We hope you found inspiration and valuable insights to fuel your journey in early childhood education. Remember the key to fostering learning, promoting play, and empowering young minds lies with your dedication and creativity. Stay connected between episodes by following us on Instagram at learnplaythrive underscore and join the conversation on Facebook at LearnPlaythrive Australia. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please like, subscribe, rate or review our podcast on your favourite platform. Your feedback helps us to continue to deliver content that resonates with you. And don't forget to visit us at our website at learnplaythrive.com.au for additional resources, blog posts, and professional development opportunities. Until next time, keep learning, keep playing, and keep thriving. We'll see you in the next episode of Learn Playthrive the podcast.