Growing up as a child of an immigrant family, I spent a lot of time learning about the world through books. My dad would read book after book on his “reading couch” after dinner, which turned me into a bookworm at a young age. While I didn’t realize it then, the stories and images in my books rarely reflected my bi-cultural household (but that didn’t stop me from reading my way through the public library!).
A Masters degree in Education, over a decade of teaching, and many books later I became a mother. I carried big dreams for my kids, one of which was raising them to become bilingual. Naturally, I turned to books as the answer to helping me on this mission. To my great surprise, I realized that not much had changed since my childhood — it took me hours of internet sleuthing to track down a used bilingual book in a bookstore on the other side of town. I started seriously questioning why after all these years, there still weren't more books that spoke to my children’s lived experiences or languages.
The message was clear: kids like mine needed more options.
I took matters into my own hands and began creating the kind of bilingual books I wished my children had. From there, Wonderly Press was born. It wasn’t long before people were asking me if I had books in other languages, inspiring me to further expand our bilingual collection to many more languages.
With Wonderly Press, I want to fill every home with books that foster a curiosity for language, cultural connection, and a lifelong love of reading.
Thanks for being a part of this journey.
- Jennifer
Founder of Wonderly Press
