Bilingual Books for Spanish Class!

I always love bringing literature to support my lessons during the middle of a unit or to end a unit. I have found it difficult to find books that are well written in English and Spanish. Sometimes the translations are not very relevant to the original text in Spanish which makes it lose flavor when reading in class. These books are well written in both languages and the author, Adriana Pacheco, wrote both the Spanish and English versions. 

The stories in each book are simple and easy to understand. The colorful illustrations represent accurately what is being expressed in the text and place the readers in the settings of the story. Many of the characters make multiple appearances in various stories, helping readers become more familiar with them, and many of the situations are very relevant to the day to day life of young learners. Each book includes a CD, and these are perfect to support listening skills in Spanish and English. What’s best, the speakers in the CD’s are native with very clear pronunciation! In each CD you will find the stories read in Spanish and English with time for the children to read along with the speaker. Even though these books are bilingual, the languages are not mixed together in sentences, a major bonus that is too often ignored by teachers and curriculum developers who think that a child needs immediate translation, forgetting that a young language learner’s mind is very different than their own! I love the idea of having bilingual books with audio because it is a tool that children who are learning or exploring the language can take home to invite their parents into their process of learning a new language.