That was the title of my last workshop at the British Library.
We tried translating “It’s raining cats and dogs” to Hindi and Marathi to giggles, shouts of laughter.
We compared the literal meaning of “He kicked the bucket” with its figurative meaning.
We performed the Herculean task of linking mythology with idioms, and then the children spilled the beans about the fact that most of their knowledge of Greek mythology came from Percy Jackson. When it came to Norse mythology and Biblical terms, their knowledge collapsed like a house of cards and they commented, “We have a long way to go and a lot to learn. We’re just knee-high to a grasshopper!” A crossword puzzle proved to be their Achilles heel, but we continued to see the glass as half-full, as the children and I got on like a house on fire!
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