Mantra Lingua exists to fulfil the needs of new and changing diasporas seen in multi-lingual classrooms in USA, UK, EU, Australia. Home language status is enhanced in bilingual versions of bestsellers, such as The Hungry Caterpillar, Brown Bear… We publish books with high quality illustrations and production standards so that our books sit proudly in any mainstream bookshelf. We cover a wide range of genres and ages, and our family of ‘Story Re-tellers’ ensure that home languages are child friendly and not mechanically translated. All our books talk, in both languages using our bespoke PENpal, thereby preserving home languages for future generations.
The Bilingual Talking Picture Dictionary is a best-selling reference book, while the IFeel Series is about feelings and emotions in moving home. The Sunita series represents second generation life in the West.
Since everyone has different learning styles, we take a multi-modal view in publishing a single story. With extensive teachers’ notes, wordless Story Cards for retelling, e-books for whiteboards and laptops, we produce a treasure trove of support material for teachers, parents and librarians.
Authors and Illustrators: Open to Submissions
Mantra Lingua welcomes submissions from authors or illustrators of children's picture books, as well as translators and narrators. Please watch the video above to get a feel for what we do.
Authors: We welcome writers from diverse backgrounds, with life experiences and ability to talk to, or express the life and feelings of, children from minority communities. The topics need not be real life, but could be imaginary or anthropomorphic. Submit stories structured for 24 page picture books, always thinking about illustrations and translatability. Please include a synopsis, and write as if it was the "blurb" on the back cover of your book. Include a note in your email about what a parent, teacher, or child could learn, or would enjoy about your book.
Illustrators: Summer 2021 we are looking for experienced illustrators (who can draw people and faces for an exciting project) from South Africa, India, Syria, Persia, or the South American continent.
We look for highly skilled and individualist illustrators - no cartoons. Ability to draw authentic, diverse faces from different backgrounds and ethnicities, ability to research and sketch out ideas, ability to be flexible and focus on Art Director's suggestions, with great involvement and keeping to deadlines. Please watch any of our 'Look Inside' book videos on this site for ideas of the art-styles we include in our books.
Please email info@mantralingua.com with any submissions.
We will do our best to respond to your submissions within 6-8 weeks, but please bear with us. If you have not heard back from us within 8 weeks of your submission, you may wish to email us again to ensure we received your submission.
Our main line is in children's picture books for ages 3 to 7. Also, since our readership is ELL, EAL, and multilingual families, for 7+ we look for books with pictures to support the text, express text better than words, and complement the text with embellishment through pictures.
Ph.D INTERNSHIPS
Our PhD internship programme recognises that valuable hands-on experience can make that all important next step in your career move more successful. You may have been studying for five years full time and the pressures to finish 'writing up' begin to mount. But we respect the hard work and self-discipline you've invested so far and would like to share our skills and challenges with your's. You may be eligible to work on real class room up projects that make meaningful impact on children in the margin. You may be asked to design research projects, work on new resources and publications, explore through secondary research various demographic or education developments, not just in Britain but abroad.
And you must be comfortable in stepping out of your comfort zone. We have, and that is why we are a very innovative company covering Education and serveral other industries, internationally.
We’re looking for like-minded innovators who share a sharp intellect, a collaborative spirit and a drive for breaking new grounds. We will be informally training you to understand the constraints and challenges of business, even though your interests are in Education. Through this, you will be in good standing for academic leadership should you wish to progress in Academics; or, and just or, if you enjoy our work, you may wish to change career track.
How to Apply? Just write to Robene Dutta, robene@mantralingua.com, explaining how, after studying what we do, you can make something extraordinary.
Mantra Lingua is an international publisher that finds low-cost solutions for multi-lingual classrooms.
SUPPORT FOR TEACHERS AND PARENTS ACROSS THE WORLD!
Mantra Lingua is a publishing house, making resources for the multi-ethnic, multi-lingual classroom in the UK, Sweden, Norway, USA, Australia, Germany and Canada. We make books and posters in English and Arabic, Tigrinya, or 66 other languages. We can replace English with German, French, Italian, and Greek at low costs and low volumes. Most of our books are already available with Swedish replacing English. Our dual language e-book library has 450+ e-books with audio in both languages for school and home. We can replace English easily with your language.
Depending on where you have come from to our site, we also have de.mantralingua.com in Germany and Central Europe, usa.mantralingua.com in North and South America, and se.mantralingua.com in Northern Europe. If you're not sure where to order from, just email us on info@mantralingua.com for direct help.
PRINTED BOOKS THAT TALK!
All Mantra Lingua's books, posters, stickers and cards are sound-enabled. They play back audio narrations or music, and readers can also record their own voice on every page. Being the world's largest publisher of dual-language books, listening as well as reading books in one's home language and another language helps language development in many bilingual parents, children, families and communities in UK, Europe, USA and elsewhere.
Mantra Lingua ensures that digital does not replace paper, but that paper is an interface for digital. That is, we are strong believers in blended learning - partnering paper with digital for a more tactile and imaginative learning experience. This way, you are not limited by a computer screen, and there are no restrictions on size. We - or you - can produce big books, wall panels, and posters that play back audio!
MAKE YOUR OWN PUBLICATIONS THAT TALK!
Even though Mantra Lingua creates and publishes an exciting list of learning resources, we also strongly believe in users becoming their own publishers. Our software products make self-publishing as easy as possible. Users can now easily make their own talking books, talking posters, and flash cards with audio. It gives themcreative freedom to make resources for their specific classroom needs, with minimal training.
Our competence is to make technology easy. Imagine adding sound to photos, drawings, any book... Now, for the first time, this is easily possible. You can make a sound-enabled photobook of the school outing or family holiday in minutes.
SOUND-ENABLE YOUR WORLD
Mantra Lingua'sTalkingPEN devices bring audio to books, posters, and stickers. There are over 1000 publications across the school age-groups in English with over 65 languages - Burmese and Karen being the latest additions. Drawings, diagrams, mindmaps, graphs, or paintings made on ordinary paper, can be enhanced with audio using our recordable labels. This is ideal for SEN use, dyslexia, and language learning. Mantra Lingua's patented technologies provide bespoke and personal support and encouragement to EAL/ESOL, MFL, and SEN students and parents, and for mainstream education.
PARENTAL PARTICIPATION
As tech innovators, we launched an e-book libraryin January 2016 under the name of Mantra Lingua KitabooCLUB. There are currently 400 publications and this will expand to 600 by the end of the year. There are over 40 languages represented. KitabooCLUB is designed to include families with siblings and parents who are new to English, and can learn with their children as they progress through school. Over 80 schools have already joined, and you can have a free trial to listen to stories in the home and English languages, watch a video of the story, and learn through the activities included in each book. It's a great way to get parental participation into the school's learning environment.
Mix e-books with their online interactivity and paper books with their PENpal activities, and the blended learning process becomes even more effective.
CORE COMPETENCE
Mantra Lingua's core competence in paper-based digital touch technology gives access to diverse markets. We serve the Education market as mentioned above, but also museums and heritage trails (www.discoverypen.co.uk), and the bird recognition market (www.birdvoice.net). We supply the RNIB with PENfriend, an audio-labelling device that brings independence to blind and partially sighted people (www.rnib.co.uk). This video shows how valuable this best-selling device is. We pride ourselves in making a number of world-first products: talking photobooks, talking laundry labels that withstand 50 degrees Celsius in detergent conditions, and tactile talking books and posters, to name a few.
READERSHIP AND TECHNICAL REACH
Established in 2002, Mantra Lingua now has offices in London and Chicago (usa.mantralingua.com), as well as partners and distributors in Sweden, Norway, Spain, Australia, Canada, France, and the USA. We are constantly active with new projects across the world: in 2020, we created Cherokee materials for Cherokee Nation, and Romanian and Russian materials for schools in Moldova, to name a few!
In Spain we are partnering with "Kids for Us" - an English Language franchisor using PENpal.
We are continually working to learn more, do more, and be more. Our technology continues to develop, and our range of resources continues to grow. In 2004 we developed digitally printed, sound-enabled books, the only ones of their kind in the world. In 2008 we introduced PENfriend for blind people; in 2010 we made low-cost digital technology for small museums and heritage houses; and in 2016, we introduced the world's largest dual-language e-book library.
We work in partnerships. We welcome you to enter a world of endless possibilities with Mantra Lingua. We believe in invention with social responsibility, mixed with a huge dose of fun! Our patent is for PENfriend (PCT/GB2009/001040).
We donate to a number of charities, some on a long-term basis, others on a crises cause. Latest include: DEC Turkey and Syria Earthquake £2k, The Banyan Trust working with children in Bangladesh £0.5k, UNICEF Pakistan £1k, DEC Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal £1k, UNICEF Afghanistan £1k in last 12 months.
DEC Afghanistan, DEC Syria, DEC Nepal, DEC Gaza, and Pardada Pardadi, an Indian educational charity working with village girls, where we sponsor a young girl's education. We are founding members of the 'British Assistive Technology Association' (BATA), members of BESA (British Education Suppliers Association), and the British Dyslexia Association (BDA).
