There’s plenty of downtime involved in raising my infant girl actually. She ignores me whenever I try to do something with her, but hell hath no fury like a woman scorned when I try to leave her playpen. Her screams can burst eardrums, I swear. Anyway, I thought of entertaining myself by reading “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” by Eric Carle in three languages.

“The Very Hungry Caterpillar” is one of the best books you can ever invest in. That’s because when your child reaches middle primary age and comes in contact with Science, you can read this beloved children’s tale again and highlight the life cycle of butterflies. That was what I did when I taught fourth grade Science. I started off my lesson by reading this book to my precocious students in my deep, sexy voice. I wanted them to appreciate how Science is everywhere around us, even in children’s tales.

Obviously, my infant girl wouldn’t care about caterpillars, as amazing as their metamorphosis is. But she gravitated towards the holes on the pages, trying to stick her tiny fingers through them. So, I can conclude that she was engaged with the book (for about thirty seconds).

Only when I read all three versions together did I notice that the Japanese version started and ended with a line of dialogue. In fact, it personified the Sun as the first line of the book was uttered by him. I heard my Japanese wife read aloud this book to my elder son before. I must say that humanising the Sun was a great adaptation by the Japanese translator. It set the tone for a lullaby-like reading.

The Chinese version reinforced for me a difficulty in learning Mandarin. There are many classifiers (量词), so while English speakers can get away with saying “one slice” for many things, Chinese speakers have to learn 个/条/根 - among other measure words - in order to convey one unit of an object accurately. Actually I don’t remember my parents and teachers teaching me the rules of classifiers; I just acquired them naturally. But since Mandarin is my children’s 3rd language, I got to make the rules explicit for them.

Maybe it’s the start of a new year, but I thought the caterpillar gobbling all kinds of goodies and stocking plenty of nutrients for itself can be equated to me reading all kinds of books to provide myself with brain fuel. However, the caterpillar secludes itself from the outside world and digests thoroughly all the nutrients - before emerging into the world as a beautiful butterfly. This is something I can learn. Give myself an imposed hiatus from outside stimuli so that the things swirling in my mind can fuse together to become something spectacular.