For my senior capstone project, I chose to create a bilingual book of children’s poems. The name of my book is Kandana Kavyamale: A Collection of Children’s Poems. It contains ten poems by my great-grandfather, Dr. G.P. Rajaratnam, who was a famous poet in Karnataka, India. The two languages used are Kannada and English. Kannada is the language of the people of the state of Karnataka, India. Since his poems were originally written using the Kannada language, I have transliterated and translated these poems so they can be read and enjoyed by others in my book.
Creating this book is important to me and my family, especially my grandmother because it is a tribute to my great-grandfather. Developing this project brings my grandmother joy to see me learning about my great-grandfather and his legacy of poems and stories. She has spent most of her life preserving his literary works. This project is also important to me because I have a lot of childhood memories of learning and reciting his poems.
This book will be geared towards elementary school-age children in America who want to learn Kannada poems, as well as for children who understand Kannada but are not able to read the script. It is also for parents, who may be second-generation Indian-Americans and may not know how to read the Kannada script. Most importantly and personally, I hope to keep my great-grandfather’s legacy alive with this project.
