Count on Culebra
By Ann Whitford Paul
Illustrated by Ethan Long
This book is
a really silly and entertaining tale both in Spanish and English that teaches
children to count from 1 to 10 in Spanish.
One day
Iguana is ready to make some dulces (candies) but instead she is in too much
pain because she just stubbed her toe. Doctor Culebra comes to the rescue and
makes really crazy suggestions on how to heal the Iguana. For example he
suggests tying cups, and spoons, and rolling pins on the Iguana's tail. At the
end all of this silliness, Doctor
Culebra’s suggestions seemed to have worked because the Iguana is distracted
with everything that is happening, that she doesn’t feel the pain. The Iguana
finally makes dulces for everyone, and everyone is happy.
I would use
this book in my classroom to do a lesson on bilingual counting and also
vocabulary skills. I also found this website online that has suggestions for
classroom activities for this book in every subject.
One thing
that I really didn’t like about this book is that the English and Spanish words
are mixed together, so I can imagine that a kid reading this book would get confused
on what words to pronounce in Spanish and in English.
That is a wonderful comment you made at the end. It had never occurred to me that it would be difficult to change between pronunciations in languages but that is very true. This book does look very cute though. Thank you for sharing it!
ReplyDeleteI really like that this book is bilingual. It could have the potential to teach english speaking kids some spanish. Through the mix of illustrations and accompaniment of english words, students could figure out and learn what the spanish words mean. Also I think this book is just to cute!
ReplyDeleteI wish i could have seen this book! it looks so colorful and beautiful! i love that it is bilingual and a great way to introduce numbers in other languages.
ReplyDelete