Happy New Year! I hope 2017 is a good year for you and your family and I hope my work—this blog, my forum, and my book—can help you experience even greater success and joy on your bilingual journey.
Before I share my big news for this year, let me point you toward an important article I posted last January. This article is still just as relevant today, and in fact, will always be relevant for the aim of raising bilingual children. So if you missed it last year, be sure to take a look now…
7 Must-Make Resolutions for Parents Raising Bilingual Kids
My big news
To kick off the year, I have three things to tell you…
My daughter will enter junior high school in the spring. (The school year in Japan runs from April to March.) It’s like her years in elementary school just blinked by and Lulu is no longer the little girl I’ve featured at this blog for the past five years—she’s becoming a young woman.
In terms of our bilingual journey, this change will mark a challenging new stage. The fact is, the junior high school in our area is twice as far from our home as the elementary school. So, on top of a long school day, club activities after school, and heavier loads of homework, she’ll have to leave the house even earlier in the morning. All of this means that the daily routines I’ve been able to maintain over the past six years of elementary school, in order to advance her (and her younger brother’s) progress in the minority language, will have to be reshaped in creative ways to fit this new reality. Things like reading aloud, which I’ve always done at breakfast, and daily homework after school in the minority language—two central routines of our journey to date—will be tested, and yet I’m determined to do what I realistically can through the busier teen years, too.
And, as always, I’ll report on our experiences at this blog—both the successes and the struggles—with an eye toward offering ideas and inspiration for your own journey.
Although I’ve made a handful of videos (if you haven’t seen them yet, do browse the video category), most of the content at this blog has been written articles. (Including this one, there are now a total of 326 posts since this blog began on September 1, 2012.) While I’ll continue writing, too—and I’m happy to consider guest posts—I now plan to put more emphasis on video.
The truth is, I also have a background in film—I’ve loved making small films ever since I was a child—and I’d like to do more work in this area. Not only will this be a fresh and fun challenge for me, I think I can create some helpful and entertaining content for you.
I can’t yet say how frequently I’ll be posting new content at this blog in 2017. For the past few years I’ve been quite diligent about making new posts at least once a week. I don’t know if that pace will continue to be realistic, though, so I hope you’ll understand if my posting schedule becomes a bit more flexible to accommodate the additional focus on creating videos.
At the same time, there’s another factor that will affect my output at this blog in 2017, and that involves my last big piece of news…
I haven’t talked about this much, but my other goal as a writer—along with material about raising bilingual children—is creative work, particularly novels. This has actually been a big part of my life for many years, but I was puttering away on this quietly, on the side, while writing about peace issues for the Hiroshima-area newspaper and about raising bilingual children online and in my book.
I’m now happy to report, though, that my first novel—after almost a decade in the making—will be released later this year! It’s a humorous story, suitable for older children and adults, in the playful spirit of the British author Roald Dahl. So if you enjoy my writing, my voice, I think you’ll enjoy this book. While it doesn’t have a “bilingual angle” (my next novel probably will!), it’s a lively adventure and I hope you’ll want to read it. (It’s a medium-sized novel of around 72,000 English words.)
Contest coming soon
One more thing today: I’ll launch a special contest soon, something I haven’t tried before at this blog. It will be an engaging challenge—with good prizes, too—so keep your eyes open for my next post!
10 Responses
Wow, lots of exciting things going on, Adam! I look forward to hearing your experiences with junior high school, since my older son started middle school in France this year, and it’s definitely challenging for us time-wise. I’ve also signed up to be an early reader of your novel – thanks for the opportunity!
Thanks, Alisa! I’ll be in touch about my novel!
I hope your son is enjoying middle school. We’ll soon see what this transition brings for my daughter and for my efforts at home. Our kids are growing up so quickly, aren’t they?!
These are all amazing news! Glad to hear about the novel and the videos, looking forward to watching them. 🙂
Rebecca, thanks! Please wish me luck with all of this—I’ll probably need it!
Wow exciting times ahead! Look forward to reading and hearing more about them all… Good luck with everything!
I appreciate your encouraging words, Tracey!
Great news Adam! Good luck with the novel! If it’s as good as Roald Dahl’s books, you have nothing to fear 🙂
Jana, thanks! I hope you’ll enjoy it!
Happy New Year! How exciting! It is going to be a fantastic year for you and your family! I am looking forward to your new book!
Thank you, Amanda! I hope 2017 is a happy and productive year for you and your family, too! Let’s continue to keep in touch!