Kileeye, Kileeye! Birdie, Birdie! A bilingual story poem In English and Malayalam

By: Gita George-Hatcher

Kileeye, Kileeye! is a silly rhyme that the author made up to recite to one of her grandchildren. It was soon a favorite with all the grandchildren who wanted to hear the poem repeatedly until they started reciting it on their own! It quickly became apparent to the author that children's natural love of interesting rhymes and rhythms could be effective in teaching any language to young children as well as to adults, and thus the idea for making Kileeye, Kileeye! into a book was born!

About the Author

Gita George-Hatcher was brought up in India, her mother tongue being Malayalam, the language spoken in Kerala, a state in south-west India. She emigrated to the United States where she completed her advanced education in Public Administration and worked in Human Services and Government, in the fields of Human Resources, Labor Relations, and Civil Service. Gita is a fluent speaker of Malayalam, and taught herself to read and write Malayalam as an adult. She observed that in America and other lands to which Malayalis emigrated, the first and second generations of children born to Malayali parents were rapidly losing the language of their ancestors. Gita's own love for her native language and her desire to spark an interest in Malayalam among children of the Malayali diaspora led her to writing simple books in Malayalam, transliterated Malayalam and English. Her first book, My First Holy Qurbono Words for Children, was published in 2020.