Saturday, 1 September 2012

Devoradores de libros: Spanish bookworms

Most of the books on my daughter´s bookshelf are English mainly because due to living in Spain I figured that it  is much easier for her to borrow Spanish books from the library or from her friends and cousins, than borrowing English books.Another reason is that many Spanish children´s books seem to be translations of English books or books written by authors from different countries,such as France, Germany, Holland etc. There appears to be a bit of a gap in Spanish literature of books for babies and toddlers. I remember asking a few bookshops and even a librarian if they could reccommend me a classic Spanish children´s book like The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Guess How Much I Love You or Dear Zoo? but none of them could give me an answer!!! Surely there must be some classic Spanish story?

I decided to do this post so that you can discover some good (at least I think so anyway!) Spanish children´s books but I´m always on the lookout for more and would be grateful for any other suggestions,particularly from any of my Spanish readers!!

One of my favourites is El Dragón frío by Andrés and Ana Guerrero, which I borrowed from the library. I don´t own a copy unfortunately as haven´t seen it in any bookshops but maybe you can order it directly from the publishers? It is a sweet,simple story about a dragon that can´t breathe fire and is illustrated simply but colourfully.Andrés and Ana Guerrero have written quite a few other toddler´s/children´s books and I think we have read them all or at least most of them but El Dragón frío remains my favourite.

Although I knocked the English translated versions of  Tento stories, I did think they seemed good stories and after buying this for a friend´s daughter and seeing that it was a sweet story, I decided to buy it for Chloe. There is a series of Tento books but so far we´ve only bought and read this one, Tento y El Regalo de Mamá by Ricardo Alcántara and illustrated by Gusti. Tento is a little dog, who in this particular story doesn´t know what present to give to his mum and the book tells us his search for the present and what present he eventually decides to give her....I won´t reveal the ending but it is very sweet and tender! The illustrations are again simple but cute and colourful.I have seen it reccommended for 2 yr olds but we read it to Chloe and she enjoys it now at only 15mnths old!!

Anyway,these are my two favourite Spanish toddler books, which I reccommend any native or non-native parents to read to their children in Spanish.I´d love to hear any reccommendations for other Spanish/ South American toddler´s books, which are preferably not translations!

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