My Big Barefoot Book of Spanish and English Words

PreS-Gr 2—With a slight one-sentence-per-page narrative to guide readers, this bilingual word book chronicles the daily activities of the Familia Palabra and the laudably diverse residents in their community. This story is virtually identical to Fatus's My Barefoot Book of Wonderful Words (Barefoot Bks., 2014) with the exception of some minor changes and the addition of Spanish vocabulary. In this incarnation, Zanzibar the cat becomes Paco and Crunchy the croc morphs into Fresco. The bright, whimsical illustrations are the same, though a few of the individual characters have been repurposed. For example, the paperboy from Wonderful Words becomes the bike messenger in this title. In addition, items identified in the previous edition are unlabeled here—the book in braille and the origami projects depicted in the library scene. Some of the Spanish terms are not as common in Latin America as in the case of cesta de picnic being used instead of the more familiar canasta de picnic. But what makes this, and other similar word-building books, less than ideal is the fact that phonetic spellings are not included to facilitate the acquisition of a bilingual vocabulary. A monolingual English-speaking child will see the word alcantarilla (defined as "manhole" in the text, but is actually a storm drain) and probably anglicize it—al-can-ta-ril-la—instead of using the correct pronunciation: ahl-cahn-tah-REE-yah. A monolingual Spanish-speaking child would conversely see manhole and try pronouncing it mahn-hoh-leh.