Storytime Bilingüe featuring “Perritos”

One of my favorite children's authors of board books is Sandra Boyton. I never appreciated the value of board books until Maya was an infant and taught me babies don't just like to read books, they also like to gnaw on them, stand on them, stack them, throw them, and of course, look at the pictures and hear the stories over and over and over while snuggled in Mami's lap. Board books are the best because they are built to withstand all the love an emerging infant reading doles out!

A friend of ours gifted us with a small collection of Boyton board books when Maya was little, and they are some of her favorite. The stories are short, playful, and fun, and the rhyme scheme and meter to them make them enjoyable to read over and over. The characters are animals and often there is instructional value to them too, as young readers learn colors, counting, feelings, animal sounds, and animal names. Because the story is brief and the images are enticing, it leaves a lot of room for interacting with the text, and as Boyton often includes all sorts of onomatopoeia, much laughing ensues when we read them.

All of our Boyton board books happen to be in English, but I'm happy to report there are many published in Spanish, too. So when my good friend and fellow mama raising a little emerging bilingual told me she doesn't have any books in Spanish for her little guy, I thought a small collection of some Spanish Boyton board books would be the perfect first birthday present!

I bought all five Boyton books in Spanish that Target had in stock, and we're excited to gift them to Mateo's best friend for his birthday this month. But before we do, I decided to present them as an author study for Bilingual Storytimes for the next five weeks, so that my friend and her son would have a recording of the books read in Spanish to listen to whenever they want.

Here is our first installment, presenting "Perritos." Enjoy!

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