Classics, Nonfiction, and Children's Literature
El rojo es mejor by Kathy Stinson and Robin Lewis (Spanish translation by Annick Press, February 2014) is a Spanish-translated version of the popular Red is Best, a story about a girl who definitely prefers everything red in her life: her stockings, mittens, and hair ties. In this story, the girl also gives her
My four-year-old son and I are reading about the Amazon rainforest as a theme right now. Our fiction favorite this time around was The Umbrella by Jan Brett. Carlos, who lives in Costa Rican rainforest, walks to the nearby rainforest to spy on the animals. He places his umbrella on the ground and climbs a
My son (age 4) has expressed an interest in learning Spanish. Although this interest comes and goes, I’ve decided to embrace his interest as much as I can. I studied Spanish extensively in college and spent a few months in South America, but in the past decade, I’m sorry to say I’ve let my Spanish
Tia Isa Wants a Car by Meg Medina and illustrated by Claude Munoz (Candlewick, 2011) is one I enjoyed but I never expected my 4-year-old son to love it as much as he did. It quickly became a favorite for us. As the title suggests, Tia Isa really wants her own car to be able to go
Waiting for the Biblioburro by Monica Brown and illustrated by John Parra (Tricycle Press, 2011) is based on the true story of a librarian in rural Colombia who delivers library books into the lives of children with the help of his two donkeys, Alfa and Beto. Told from the perspective of a little girl named Ana who
After reading Siesta by Ginger Guy and illustrated by Rene King Moreno (An ALA Notable Book), I decided to try this. In the book, two kids and their teddy bear, gather together a few things, such as a yellow book and a blue backpack and then a brightly multi-colored blanket and then go outside for their “siesta.”
Pablo Neruda’s early poetry (specifically, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair) does not have much to do with Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street. Neruda was a Chilean who wrote love poetry (in Spanish) in the early 1900s at the age of 20. Hispanic-American Sandra Cisneros wrote in the 1980s a short
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel is almost a genre by itself. The traditional Mexican recipes are provided in a novel format as it tells the story of Tita, Tita’s overbearing mother, and Tita’s lover, Pedro, who marries her sister. And yet, it’s not a cook book, and I don’t think it’s not an
Ficcciones by Jorge Luis Borges is about 170 pages in Spanish; the English translation of the same book is about 120 pages (within Borges’ Collected Fictions). Why, then, has this book taken weeks to get through? Borges’ writing style is powerful. In some sense, I’m glad I struggled through Borges just to get a feel
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