I literally went on a binge for baby books in Spanish last year when we visited Madrid, Spain. One of my picks was not quite a baby book, but given that my Spanglish is probably better than my Spanish, I figured it would come in handy as my daughter grew up -- for both me and her. It's the Album Larousse de la Naturaleza and it's a nature book with pictures of fruit, vegetables, trees, flowers, birds, plants, insects and more -- plus, the word for it in Spanish.  

Some of the words in here:

abeja = bee

saltamontes = grasshopper

luciérnaga = firefly or lightning bug

frambuesa = raspberry

petirrojo = robin

gorrión = sparrow

coliflór = cauliflower

alcachofa = artichoke

I love this little book because it will help build both mine and my daughter's specialized vocabulary in Spanish. I mean, it's pretty easy for us to teach kids about the different fruits and vegetables they eat because it's something they are around every single day. But what about flowers? Just as flower just isn't a flower, a flor isn't just a flor. It's a rosa, tulipan, jacinto, geranio, peonia, margarita, lavanda, hibisco and amapola. Now that my daughter is a full-fledged non-stop talker, I'm really into building up that specialized vocabulary, especially because I've found that I don't even know all of my flowers and trees (elm, oak, magnolia, pine, mango, olive, banana -- soooo many trees!!! thank goodness for the arboretum).

I actually never really thought too much about my own specialized vocabulary until my husband and I got married and bought a home and decided to plant flowers. And then a bird family decided to move into our porch. What kind is it? That's a question this book will help me answer, en español, for my daughter.

  

The themes in the stories we read are children are often universal, so even if it's about a little bunny wanting to run away from his doting mother, we can still see a little bit of ourselves in the characters. But once in a while you'll come across a book that is more than just something we can connect with. It's a direct reflection of your life, or your family's life. My mom gave me a copy of a children's book by Chicana artist Carmen Lomas Garza this weekend, Family Pictures, or Cuadros de Familia, and I was just so happy to see a book that captured life in South Texas --mostly as my mother knew it, and a bit of how I knew it, too. Garza, who is Mexican-American, says on the first page of the book that the "pictures in this book are all painted from my memories of growing up in Kingsville, Texas, near the border with Mexico." She says she grew up dreaming of becoming an artist, and with the inspiration and encouragement of her family she finally realized that dream. The book is of family pictures, and each painting tells a little story, in English and in Spanish, about life in South Texas.

Earlier this month I picked up a few children's books about Dia de los Muertos from the library. This one, El Dia de los Muertos by Ivar da Col, is in Spanish, and I love the illustrations. It breathes life into everything about Day of the Dead: papel picados, calaveras, pan dulce, cempasuchil, fruta, altares, cemeterios and more than anything else, celebration.

I picked up this Spanish children's book at the Libreria Universal in Miami during a trip to visit the family a few weeks ago. It's a terrific book that tells el alfabeto via cubanismos. Here's how it begins:

A Cristina y a Alejandro les gusta mucho ir a casa de sus abuelos. A su abuelo los ninos le dicen Abu y a la abuela Aba. Con los abuelos juegan y aprenden cosas nuevas, pero lo que mas les gusta a Cristina y a Alejandro son los cuentos que les hacen Abu y Aba; sobre todo cuando son cuentos de Cuba.

Un dia los abuelos decidieron ensenarles a Cristina y a Alejandro las letras del alfabeto en espanol. Y fue asi como les ensenaron el alfabeto cubano ...

So the book goes through the alphabet, from A to Z, beginning with Azucar, and telling "Aba le pone azucar al cafecito cubano cuando se lo prepara a mama y a papa." It goes through words like Frutas, and talking about how Cuba gives the best fruits in the world, like mango, mamey and guanabana. G is for Guantanamera -- so when I'm reading it to the toddler we always have to take a pause there to sing a little. H is for La Habana, and there's an explanation of how in Spanish, the letter H is silent. Others: K is for Kioskos, M for Mambises (including Jose Marti), R is for Rosa -- and there's a poem La Rosa Blanca by Marti.

Me encanta el orgullo que salta de este libro. And I am not Cuban, but I can appreciate one's love for your roots and cultura. It would be wonderful if there were children's books like this for other Latin American countries.

The book is written by Dr. Eduardo Otero and illustrated by Cristina Milian Ganz and is available for purchase online here.

Let's see, if I would write a book about Texican-isms, I would include: A is for Aguacate, F is for Fajitas, M is for Mesquite or Mariachi, N is for Nopales, T is for Tacos, R is for Rio Grande, C is for Coyotes, and on and on. This should totally be a series of books -- it would be a hit!

I'm a big fan of the public library, always have been, but especially when I was a busted-broke single woman getting paid in peanuts, trying to pay back school debt. Actually, I'm still paying off those never-ending school loans, what am I talking about??

But I've become a lazy public library user since moving to DC two-and-a-half years ago. But a brand-spanking, beautiful new library just opened its doors down the street from us a few months ago and visiting it was reason enough to make the trip to get my library card and take the toddler K to a biblioteca for the first time.

So last week, I bundled up my almost 18-month-old and off we went. By the time we got there she was totally passed out in her carseat -- and doing what any sane mother who needs a little breather would do -- I let her sleep her way through the library in the stroller. It gave me a chance to check it out carefully.

Now this is a nice, modern **neighborhood** library. It's not big by any means, but I especially love that its made of glass and allows you to soak in the sunlight even in the middle of winter. The Wall Street Journal even noticed and named it in its Best Architecture 2010 list:

In Washington, D.C., the beacon-bright Watha T. Daniel/Shaw Library designed by Davis Brody Bond Aedas is shaped into a dynamically jutting prow that is a far cry from the inward-turned, windowless brick models of yesteryear. The architecture—utilitarian but inventive, and with a green roof and 20-foot-tall central space—says much about the priorities and the programs going on inside libraries, where media-related services, community meeting spaces and teen rooms are becoming the norm as the former safe havens for books and bookworms turn themselves into interactive civic centers.

Looks are great and all, but I didn't have much hope of finding good children's books in Spanish. I am happy to say I was proven wrong. It's not rows of bookshelves, but I'd say it was at least a few hundred, including many that weren't just translation of say, Olivia or the Eric Carle books. So here are two books I got that we're reading for the next three weeks, until I have to return them:

Garbancito: Pachín, pachán, pachón a Garbancito no piséis? Érase una vez la historia de un niño muy pequeño muy pequeño y de un arco iris de fuegos de artificio que salían del culete de un buey, lo demás ¡debes leerlo!, no puedes perdértelo porque estás ante otro clásico de la literatura infantil con el que crecer leyendo. El amor y la protección que los padres dan a los pequeños, son la letra pequeña de esta adaptación del cuento popular. Así que a partir de ahora, cuidado dónde pisas y pachín?

I really like this book, especially how it ends and the fact that includes the word "pedo." Jaja! The author is Olalla Gonzalez, illustrated by Marc Taeger and published by Kalandraka.

Our nightly reading to the toddler usually begins with Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?. No offense to Brown Bear, he's wonderful and all, but I really do want to try to do as much reading as I can to the toddler in Spanish. So after revving up in English, everything else I read is in Spanish. Problem is, it's slim pickings for Spanish books here in the U.S. -- or at least they're not easy to come by, so I'm having trouble building up the toddler's book collection. At 17 months, the toddler is at the board books stage, so I picked up a few while in Spain a few months ago. I guess it doesn't make my search for books easier since I'm choosey about what books I buy, and I try to get original stories, not necessarily translations (and yes, I realize many fairy tales weren't even in English originally, either). I wasn't having much luck at this Spanish bookstore til I honed in on one little section where the books just jumped out at me. I realized they were all from the same company -- Anaya Infantil y Juvenil. I bought several, including these two:

Lola Trae Regalos: Lola es una encantadora mariquita que tiene muchos amigos. Ha vuelto de vacaciones y no se ha olvidado de ninguno. ¡Hay regalos para todos! La mariposa, el gusano, la hormiga, el caracol, la libélula, la luciérnaga y el escarabajo no se lo pueden creer: ¡todos tienen su regalo! Sin embargo, ellos piensan que el mejor regalo es su amistad.

Un Perro Blanco: Copo era un perro tan blanco, tan blanco, que la gente lo confundía con una oveja, y si iba a la nieve, nadie podía verlo. Hasta que un día decidió cambiar su aspecto…
Ana y Andrés Guerrero han creado, a cuatro manos, cuatro títulos con ilustraciones sencillas ("Dos osos grandes", "El dragón frío", "Un perro blanco" y "El caracol lento"), pero llenas de guiños que atraerán la atención de los primeros lectores.

See, don't they sound great? The toddler K is always asking for Lola, too. It wasn't until we were back home and these books were in our reading rotation that I realized just how stellar they were, and of course, I wanted MORE, MORE. Meh, seems I can't order them internationally :( Totally makes me lean more and more toward wanting the capability to download e-books for children to the iPad (that I don't own, YET!). I know it's already available, but I'm just on the fence about traditional versus e-books right now, especially for children's books.

Anaya's blog is a pretty good read too. If you browse through it you can see just how great their little books are, the writing and illustrations. Wish I could run to the nearest bookstore and have them all there waiting. I'd settle for an online children's bookstore that carried a wide selection of Spanish-language books. Considering the population, I don't really think that's asking much. What's taking bookstores here so long to figure this out?

I was really, really tired and bleary-eyed when I trudged into DFW yesterday night on my way back to DC, but amazingly there was zero line at the American counter and just one person ahead of me at security. I felt like I was going through Tallahassee, or Laredo, or Baton Rouge's airports -- which have short lines, but not a single Starbucks, gasp!

Thank the coffee gods, there are plenty of Starbucks at DFW, and of course, chingos (the word my mom tells me is apparently my preferred word to say 'a lot') of Texas-themed gift shops. But there's also one at terminal C called South of Gate 6 -- like South of the Border, Mexican-theme, get it. But okay, I've been to this shop before. Sad when you remember the gift shops, but I remembered this was the shop where I saw the hand-made Mexican dolls. Maybe it was another South of gift shop, but whatever, who knew there was more than one. Airports screw with your tired mind like that.

I was actually surprised that this shop had a pretty good little collection of bilingual children's books, including this one by Jose Luis Orozco-- De Colores and Other Latin-American Folk Songs for Children -- which I bought for baby K.

I've seen this online but like I've said before, I think its so hard to buy books online. I like to sift through them first.

This book, I have to say, is a nice collection of songs, rhymes and hand games -- complete with the musical arrangement (for all the guitar heroes out there) and lyrics in English and Spanish. There's also little background info on the origin of the song. I also like the whimsical illustrations.

Some of the songs include: De colores; Los pollitos; Las mananitas; Sana, sana; El Coqui; Paz y libertad; Duermete, mi nino; La granja; etc. The one that's in here that baby K likes a lot is Los Elefantes. I've got a very annoying, high-pitched kid-singing version of it on my iphone. Baby K loves it -- that version -- so what's a mama to do? Play it again and again. I'm sure she gets just as annoyed listening to NPR.

On an outing one day without me, my husband E and baby K ran across what he describes as an amazing Spanish-language bookstore. And to my amazement, he found it here in DC, on New York Ave. in downtown and not online. I searched online for it--because of course he did not remember the name of the store. It's called Portico, and it's actually a partnership between the Inter-American Development Bank and Mexico's Fondo de Cultura Economica. Hm, interesting. And actually what's more interesting to me is that they call it a Latin American bookstore, not a Spanish bookstore. Guess the emphasis is on the region, not language. It's housed at the IDB headquarters here in DC. I'm going to make it a point to check it out soon.

So E bought two children's books there that are pretty cute, if not a little oddly titled (if your mind is of a Superbad level, which mine totally is). Here's a link to the Fondo de Cultura Economica's website. It lists other bookstores by them in Mexico, and titles they carry, which you can order online and they'll ship international according to the website. Woo-hoo! That's a great thing because finding a bookstore that carries quality books (even decent translated books) in Spanish is tough. And unfortunately, sometimes even finding any bookstore in the area is tough (I still can't believe they shut down the only bookstore in Laredo, Texas. WTH?).  So, if you know of other good bookstores across the country that carry a pretty good selection of children's books in Spanish, let me know. I've ordered a few books online and let me just say, it aint the same as checking them out in person.

This is one of the books E bought for the baby K. Laugh. Get beyond the title. Laugh some more. I laughed, and still laugh every time I see it because I'm a babosa.

It's a pretty good little book. I love the art--says its illustrated by Jonathan Farr. Its written by M. Carmen Sanchez.