Book Talk 5: El loro Tico Tango

El loro Tico Tango

Author : Anna Witte

Reading Level: Ages 3 and up

Language: Spanish

El loro Tico Tango is such a fun book for kids, and even for adults! The storyline is awesome. The book is very rhythmic and repetitive but it is entertaining at the same time. It also has a good moral to it. The illustrations are filled with colors that make them come alive.

Tico Tango is this naughty little parrot who always wants what others have. He goes around the rainforest stealing others delicious fruit, until one day he has stolen more fruit than he can carry. He learns that being greedy is not a good thing. All of his animal friends forgive him and Tico Tango ends up dancing a Tango! :)

I really like this book because it is actually written in Spanish, it is not translated. I like that because with some books that are translated in Spanish they sometimes don’t do a very good job at it and much of the story is lost.

I think that this book could definitely be used with the younger kids in teaching vocabulary words in Spanish and in English. Vocabulary words that could be thought would be the colors of the fruits, the names of the fruits and the animals that are in the story. We could also learn about the rainforest.

I think a really cool activity that we could do that involved using this book would be to ask everyone to bring their own favorite fruit. Then we could go around the class and tell everyone what it is. I bet some kids would bring fruits that other kids didn’t even know existed, which would be a cool learning experience because we could talk about those fruits. Also we could have a discussion about where all these fruits grow (trees or on the ground) and in what types of climate. At the end we can all share and eat the fruit :)