Learning Spanish with Children's Books

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Do you remember how you learned to speak English?  Probably not.  Chances are though that you spent a lot of time listening to others talk and maybe even listening to a story or two.  Stories are a great way to learn new vocabulary and to acquire grammar structures without even realizing it.  On the sidebar of my blog I have some of my favorite Spanish children's books listed (through Amazon), but I thought I would take a moment to highlight some of the great books out there for language learning.

Do you know Froggy? If not, you should get to know him!  Jonathan London has written a pile of Froggy books and some of them have been translated into Spanish.  Froggy books are longer ones, but they have such humor and some of them have predictable outcomes that they are well worth the effort.
Unfortunately there is only ONE Froggy book currently in print, Froggy se viste (Spanish Edition).  However there are several books that are fairly cheap and out of print.  You just have to search for them.  Here is a list of what I have found...

 La Mejor Navidad De Froggy (Scholastic)
 Vamos Froggy
 Froggy y el Día de Halloween (Froggy's Halloween)
 Froggy juega al futbol
 Froggy Seva A Dormir
Froggy Va a La Escuela
 Froggy Sale a Cenar
 Froggy Toca En La Banda
 Froggy va al medico (Spanish Edition)
Froggy has become so popular with some of my students that I recently ordered some of the Froggy books in English and will translate them for my students to enjoy.

Here are a few other books that are either fun to read or help with vocabulary building:

The "Oso" books have basic vocabulary and great illustrations.  There are several books in this series:


Bear about Town/Oso En La Ciudad (Bilingual English/Spanish) (Multilingual Edition) (The Bear Series) (Spanish Edition)

 Bear in Sunshine/Oso Bajo El Sol (Spanish Edition) (Fun First Steps)

 Bear at Home/Oso En Casa (Bilingual English/Spanish) (Multilingual Edition) (Spanish & English Bilingual Bk)

 Bear at Home/Oso En Casa (Bilingual English/Spanish) (Multilingual Edition) (Spanish & English Bilingual Bk)

Or how about a traditional favorite, Dr. Seuss?



Huevos verdes con jamón

 Un Pez, Dos Peces, Pez Rojo, Pez Azul/One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish (Spanish Edition)


Eric Carle's books are great also...


From Head to Toe (Spanish edition): De la cabeza a los pies

Oso pardo, oso pardo, ¿qué ves ahí? (Brown Bear and Friends) (Spanish Edition)

 There are a ton of Spanish children's books out there.  One of the easiest ways to search for them on Amazon is if it originally was a book in English type in the English title and the word "Spanish" after it.  Normally if the Spanish version exists it will pop up.  Have fun searching!



 

3 comments:

dstb said...

My kids loved Froggy. Sigh. Those days are behind me now.

Anyway, I don't know if your library has it, but my library has subscribed to Scholastic's BookFlix. From home, I can enter my library card and get access. Bookflix pairs a fiction and non-fiction story. For example, "Click, Clack, Moo, Cows That Type" is paired with "Let's Visit a Dairy Farm" The fiction book is presented as a video, while the non-fiction book is done as just pages to read. Each has a "read along" feature.

Now I am getting to why I am telling you all of this. Some of the books are available in Spanish. So, the kids could hear someone read the book in Spanish and they can follow along with the words at the bottom of the page. In the non-fiction one, you can read it yourself, or put the read-along feature on and a Spanish speaker will read while you follow along with the highlighted word.

I think one of the interesting aspects of this is that you could become familiar with a book in English and then do it in Spanish. I am not a language teacher, but I would think that would help when you are trying to understand the Spanish.

Anyway, I don't know if your library has it, but maybe it could be suggested. If they have a good Friends group, maybe they would be willing to pay for it to benefit the entire community.

Sarah

Debbie said...

Thanks for the info, Sarah. I will check into this.

lisibo said...

Hi Debbie
Thanks for this post. I've shared it on my blog! http://lisibo.com/2013/08/learning-spanish-with-childrens-books/
Lisa xx