Spanish Books for Every Child Ready to Read

I am a big fan of the Every Child Ready to Read (ECRR) parent education initiative, developed by the Public Library Association (PLA) and the Association for Library Services to Children (ALSC).  As a Children's Librarian, I presented many ECRR workshops for parents in both English and Spanish.  As a consultant, one of the services I offer is helping libraries offer ECRR workshops to Spanish-speaking parents in their service area.  One of the reasons why I love ECRR so much is because it is a data-supported model which accomplishes multiple goals at once.  This is particularly true as it is offered to Latino and Spanish-speaking communities.  Not only does it reach early literacy goals by teaching and empowering parents as the first teachers of their children, it also works as an outreach tool to form new relationships between libraries and Latino community organizations and even individual families.  I am a huge advocate of the ECRR initiative and I am thrilled that the updated version will soon be available in a Spanish as well, Cada niño listo para leer.

In order to support librarians and library staff offering ECRR workshops to Spanish-speaking families, I thought I would share some of my favorite Spanish and bilingual books that support early literacy development.  These are books that are fun to share with children, are wonderful to incorporate into storytimes, and make great examples for sharing with parents during ECRR workshops.

Board Books for Babies
My Colors, My World / Mis colores, mi mundo by Maya Christina Gonzalez
This Belpré honor recipient for illustration is now available in board book form.  Explore the colors hiding in the desert with young Maya.

I Love to Sleep / Me encanta dormir / J'aime dormir and I Love to Eat / Me encanta comer / J'aime manger by Amélie Graux
Trilingual touch-and-feel board books introduce simple vocabulary.

¡Fiesta! by Ginger Foglesong Guy
Count the objects the niños buy at the market for their fiesta.

Time for Bed / Es hora de dormir and Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes / Diez deditos de las manos y diez deditos de los pies by Mem Fox
Two much loved titles for babies now available in bilingual board books featuring spectacular rhyming translations by F. Isabel Campoy.

¡Cu-cú, bebé! and ¿Dónde está el ombliguito? by Karen Katz
Spanish versions of fun lift-the-flap board books that introduce new vocabulary in an interactive manner.

Picture Books for Toddlers
Hello Night / Hola noche by Amy Costales
A gentle story that rhymes in both languages.  Perfect for bedtime.


Let's Eat! / ¡A comer! by Pat Mora
A sweet story in the "My Family / Mi Familia" series about the joy of sharing a meal together as a family.  The entire series is highly recommended; other titles are Wiggling Pockets / Los bosillos saltarines and Sweet Dreams / Dulces sueños.

Fiesta Babies by Carmen Tafolla
Rhyming English text which incorporates Spanish words introduces us to the many ways in which babies celebrate!


¡Muu, Moo! Rimas de animales / Animal Nursery Rhymes by Alma Flor Ada and F. Isabel Campoy
Animal rhymes that niños and parents will enjoy sharing time and again.


ABeCedarios: Mexican Folk Art ABCs in English and Spanish by Cynthia Weill
The first in a series of bilingual first concept books that feature photographs of traditional Mexican folk art pieces as illustrations.  Others in the series are Opposites / Opuestos, Colores de la vida, and Count Me In!


Picture Books for Preschoolers
Quinito's Neighborhood / El vecindario de Quinito by Ina Cumpiano
Meet the diverse folks in Quinito's neighborhood while learning fantastic vocabulary!

Ten Little Puppies / Diez perritos by Alma Flor Ada and F. Isabel Campoy
A traditional Spanish children's song in storybook form.  Count and sing along!

Un pez muy divertido by Jack Tickle
One of several Spanish pop-up books in the "Libros Cu-cu Sorpresa" series.  Spanish pop-ups can be difficult to find for purchase; it's really fun to be able to share them with kids in storytime or at a workshop.

What Can You Do with a Rebozo? / ¿Qué puedes hacer con un rebozo? by Carmen Tafolla
The rebozo, a traditional shawl, can be many things if you use your imagination.

Arroz con leche / Rice Pudding by Jorge Argueta
One of several bilingual cooking poem stories.  The stories are actually recipes told in poem form, which makes them excellent for acting out and talking about what happens first, middle and last.  Others are Sopa de frijoles / Bean Soup and Guacamole.

What did I miss?  This is just a sample; there are many more great Spanish and bilingual books that promote early literacy skill development and are fun to share with kids.  If one that you love is not on this list, please leave a comment and share it with us!

A BIG Idea for Building Early Literacy - ¡Elefantes!

Tonight in Bilingual Family Storytime we are sharing animal stories, songs and activities, including Petr Horacek's Elefante, also available in English as Elephant.  This is a great story about using our imaginations to have fun, and it uses text in some cool ways.  Here's an example of how to communicate the value of unusual text for building early literacy to parents while introducing the book:

"Our first book, Elephant by Petr Horacek, uses various shapes and directions in the text, which helps children learn that when we use books, we read from left to right.  This is an important skill called print utilization that helps prepare young children to learn to read.

El primer libro, Elefante por Petr Horacke, cambia mucho las formas y direcciones en el texto.  Esto ayuda a los niños a aprender que cuando usamos libros, leemos desde la izquierda a la derecha.  Esta es una habilidad importante que se llama el reconocimiento de la palabra escrita que prepara a los niños a aprender a leer."

I found an awesome song on YouTube by Habla Blah Blah called "Los elefantes" that we are going to use too.  We will count and stomp along with the song, which would be super easy to sing again in English.  We may even get out some rhythm sticks!  This will be a great chance to bring out my very favorite Folkmanis elephant puppet to come out and play too!

Can't wait to share these ideas and more with all of our amigos tonight at 6 PM at the Village Branch library!

UPDATE!
One of my co-presenters (the amazing Freda Mosquera) at the "Growing Up Bilingual Programming: A Tribute to Rose Treviño" session at the Reforma IV conference last Septmber, shared a very cool way in which she uses the traditional "Elefantes" song in her program.  I have since done this in my programs and it is so much fun!  Take a piece of string or yarn as your telaraña and have paper elefantes for each child.  I have numbered each of my elefantes 1-10.  Then have the children come up one at a time to add their elefante to the telaraña with a clothespin.  Number one comes up first and adds her elephant and then takes the end of the yarn to sing the first verse of the song and call over elefante dos.  This is interactive and engaging, so it works for mixed ages.  It uses a traditional rhyme, familiar to both Spanish-speaking and English-speaking communities, which makes it very powerful for reinforcing the development of phonological awareness.  Finally, it also helps to practice counting skills and number identification, two essential school readiness skills.  Have fun adding this to your programs!
The super librarians of Flannel Friday have a flannel, the words in both languages and a video of the song in Spanish all available here.

Storyblocks by Colorado Libraries for Early Literacy

Colorado, way to go!  First of all, "Colorado Libraries for Early Literacy" is a brilliant statewide initiative.  Second, I love Storyblocks!  Storyblocks is a website for parents, caregivers, etc. with lots of age-appropriate videos in English and Spanish of librarians demonstrating rhymes and songs to share with little ones, helping them develop vocabulary and phonological awarenes.  This website is awesome.

I will be in Denver, CO in September for the REFORMA 4th National Conference, presenting a preconference workshop on bilingual programming for various ages with a panel of librarians from across the country.  I will love to meet with other librarians in or near Denver, or attending the conference, who are serving Latino families, offering bilingual programs, or promoting early literacy to Spanish-speaking parents.  It is always so invigorating to hear the creative ways in which others are making an impact!

What are other libraries and librarians doing in a visible way to promote early literacy and empower parents?

Manos pequeñas, ideas grandes: A bilingual discovery center program

My amazing colleagues at the Tates Creek Branch library have been doing a series of programs called "Little Hands, Big Ideas" for a while now.  Last year I observed one, and got inspired to try a bilingual version here at the Village Branch.  Today was our first program, and it was really fun!

The program works like this: various activity stations are set up using a certain theme, and the parent/caregiver and child move from activity to activity.  Through this interactive play, the child is building early literacy, science and math concepts.  There is a lot of prep to setup the program, but it is worth it to see child and parent interacting together and having fun while they build important Kindergarten Readiness skills.

Our theme for today's program was Grocery Store / El supermercado.  We started off with a book and a story: Susan Middleton Elya's Bebé Goes Shopping, which introduces Spanish vocabulary through rhyming English text, and "Chocolate," one of our favorite phonological awareness building rhymes.  Then it was off to explore at the five stations.

Station 1:  Shopping Baskets / Cestas de compras
Children counted the items in two shopping baskets and compared which one had more items.  They then created patterns with the groceries and lined the various items up by size.  This helped them practice counting up to 20, comparing objects of different sizes and constructing simple patterns. 

Station 2:  Shopping Cart / Carrito de compras
Kids estimated how many objects they could fit into the shopping cart and then experimented by placing object in the cart.  They did the same activity again, estimating how many small items would fit into the cart and then how many large items would fit.  This also practiced counting and size comparisons, as well as making and testing hypotheses.


Station 3:  Food Sort / Tipos de alimentos
Kids sorted various types of foods into the appropriate categories based on the USDA food pyramid.  This helped children practice sorting skills.

Station 4:  Let's Go Shopping / Vamos de compras

This was a very fun activity.  Kids could use shopping baskets and mini shopping carts to search for the groceries on their list, while they talked with their parent or cargiver about what they were purchasing and what they would use it for.  This activity helped build early literacy skills such as vocabulary and narrative skills by sparking parent and child conversation.  Plus, pushing around the mini cart was a lot of fun!

Station 5:  Price Matching / Emparejamiento de precios

Lots of products and prices were spread out for kids to match the prices to the correct items.  The best part?  They could then enter the prices into a REAL cash register.  It even beeped and opened to reveal play money!  This was an opportunity to identify various numbers and to compare numbers of different sizes. 

This style of program is a great way to share with parents the types of early skills their children need to know to be ready for school success, and to share fun ways of practicing those skills which they can expand out at home or in other locations.  All of the files used in this program are available online here at Google Docs.  Do you do any kind of discovery center programming?  How do you make it accessible for everyone in your community?

Las seis habilidades de pre-alfabetización

Posts have been few and far between lately, but such is the nature of May.  Final purchases are being made with end-of-year budgets, and, of course, all energy is going into planning for Summer Reading.  Our program started last week, and the Village branch staff have been doing an amazing job at making sure all families are signed up and participating in this year's program.

For a quick post, I thought I'd share a video that LPL just added to our YouTube channel.  I worked on this a few months back.  It is our first all-Spanish video, and it is about the six early literacy skills and library services.  Enjoy!

Colorín Colorado - A Website You MUST Know!

I just wanted to take a minute to post a link to the Colorín Colorado website (the sister site of Reading Rockets), in case there are any blog visitors out there working with bilingual families who don't yet know about it. This is easily one of the most valuable websites I have ever come across for librarians, parents and educators who are working with or raising bilingual children.  There is a wealth of scientific information related to the early literacy and educational development of bilingual children available on this site, in both English and Spanish.  I dig around here for new information whenever I have a spare minute to browse the web, and always find articles to print off for the families who come to my bilingual storytime.  The greatest part is that all of the articles are available in English and Spanish, so I can make the same information available to all families who attend.  Most useful are the Reading Tip Sheets for Parents, which break down different tips and ideas for how to promote early literacy skills with your child at home based on their age.  These sheets are available in 11 different languages, including Spanish!  It's really a great website, easy to navigate and full of valuable information.  I highly recommend checking it out and sharing it with other families and educators whom you know.

Phonological Awarenes - My favorite ready to read skill!

As part of our outreach to the Spanish-speaking community here in Columbus, my co-worker Gabriela (from "Proteja a su familia contra incendios") and I have offered to write a monthly article for La Jornada Latina. The first one ran today, and I have to say, it looks great! You can find it on page 6 of this week's edition.

One of the most fun elements of bilingual storytime for me is choosing activities like songs and rhymes that help children develop phonological awareness, the ability to hear sounds, particularly the small sounds inside of whole words. At the recent "Listos para leer" presentation at Centro Esperanza Latina, families were very interested in learning more about music and other interactive activities they could do with their children to develop this skill. Parents of active children who sometimes have trouble sitting down to read a book were particularly interested. As a follow up to this, I wrote our first article on this very topic.

I am thrilled with the support La Jornada Latina is showing to the Columbus Metropolitan Library in helping us better reach the Spanish-speaking community in Columbus!

A tiny bit of shameless self-promotion...

I have to share that I am extremely pleased and excited to see that my recent "Listos para Leer" (Ready to Read in Spanish) presentation at Centro Esperanza Latina made the news! La Jornada Latina ran an article about it in their most recent issue, free on newstands now.

This event was easily one of the coolest things I've gotten to do in my job, thus far. We held two presentations, both of which were extremely well attended. All in all, we were able to make a library connection, deliver early literacy information, and provide kits filled early literacy tools such as board books and maracas to over 50 Spanish-speaking families! I have to admit that I was terrified, as this was the biggest presentation I have yet done in Spanish! Things went great however, and I had a lot of help from my colleagues Melinda Moreno, Michelle Garver, and Joy Converse. I am very grateful to the United Way for the grant that is funding such "Listos para Leer" presentations, to the Director of the Centro Esperanza Latina, Ms. Gianella Martinez for all of her help in coordinating this event, and to Ms. Patricia Ruiz for sharing our story through this article. I'm posting a copy of it below for those of you who read Spanish:


Imparten taller “Listos para leer”
PATRICIA RUIZ

La biblioteca metropolitana de Columbus, en colaboración con Action for Children, desarrolló durante los días 23 y 25 de febrero de 2009, en el Centro Esperanza Latina, el taller programa para padres “Todos los niños listos para leer”. A estos talleres gratuitos asistieron numerosos padres de familia de la comunidad, quienes recibieron información sobre cómo preparar el niño para el kinder y qué actividades debe realizar el padre en la casa para que el niño se inicie en el hábito de la lectura. Los participantes recibieron un maletín con libros en español, un abecedario magnético, marionetas y otros elementos útiles para que el niño desarrolle el amor por la lectura y la escritura.

El paquete también incluía una solicitud para obtener la tarjeta de membresía de la biblioteca para los menores de 17 años de edad, la cual es expedida totalmente gratis.