PRIME TIME Launches Summer Bilingual Book Loan Program

“Soixante-dix/Setenta,” PRIME TIME’s new bilingual book-lending project, launched this summer as a pilot program into three communities. Designed by program assistant Hali Dardar, “Soixante-dix/Setenta” aims to distribute PRIME TIME’s library of humanities-themed bilingual children’s books into multicultural communities to stimulate language projects. The program offers a loan of 70 books (seven sets of 10 children’s books) for the duration of the summer.

Neustra Voz (“Our Voice”) will host Spanish family reading nights in New Orleans, PRIME TIME scholar Martha Hodnett is conducting French bilingual story times at the Lafourche Parish library in Thibodaux, and NuNu Arts and Culture Collective in Arnaudville is bringing children in their French language immersion camp to read stories to residents in the St. Martin nursing home. This program cycle will end September 10, and another round of applications will open later this year, for any Louisiana resident or entity (community members, schools, students, cultural organizations, etc.).

NuNu, in Arnaudville, shared a list of their recent and planned activities, including sharing books with Louisianans in nursing homes who have spoken the French language, but do not know how to read it. Nursing home residents, participants at NuNu’s La Table Francaise and La Table Jeunesse, and Jacques Arnaud French Studies Collective have all enjoyed titles such as The Monkey and the Crocodile, The Giving Tree, and Elephant’s Child, among others. For more information, call Hali Dardar, 504.620.2628.