Good Reads

Our trips to our local library have become a weekly occurrence. We’ve been reading quite a few excellent selections and since today is World Book Day, I thought I’d start doing a round up of our favorites!! Today I am going to start with 2 bilingual books because lately I am feeling an increasing importance to fight for my kids to maintain some sort of bilingual status. It’s important for the kids to hear the language daily and reading books that includes a second language makes it a fun way to learn and become familiar with the cadence and rhythm of the Spanish language.

“They read like a playground where Spanish and English go to play…”

First up is Susan Middleton Elya, she is one of my favorite children’s book authors. Her books are so well written! They read like a playground where Spanish and English go to play. The rhyming and the code switching is melodic and fun. The kids love hearing it almost as much as I love reading it to them! When Vie was little we used to read “Say Hola To Spanish” every day. It was a gift from the library and a book we absolutely treasured! Visiting the library now with the littles, I came across another selection by Middleton-Elya and was equally enchanted! Levi walked into the library set on finding a book with a wolf and I am so glad he made this weird request!! We found “Little Roja Riding Hood”, a new take on the classic Little Red Riding Hood story that includes a wolf but also two very strong female roles in Roja and her Abuelita!

Second, I want to share with you a book by Alma Flor Ada called “I Love Saturdays y Domingos” an incredibly creative book about a little girl that visits her Grandma and Grandpa on Saturdays and her Abuela and Abuelito on Sundays. Throughout the book it compares and contrasts her visits and we learn that despite the cultural differences, her visits are very similar! It ends with a gathering that anybody growing up bilingual can relate to. I personally found this book particularly emotional because I couldn’t help imagining the kind of visits my own kids would have with their own Abuelito or, Alito as Vie called him.

These selections are both such great books. I really hope you’ll give them a read! Enjoy them either at your local library or at home! I’ll put an Amazon link here where you can find all the books we are currently reading and loving!

Happy World Book Day and Happy Reading!