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Storytime Bilingüe featuring "My Heart Fills With Happiness / Mi corazón se llena de alegría" and other titles from the Early Childhood Alliance of Framingham

We are excited to announce we're continuing our partnership with the Early Childhood Alliance of Framingham, and over the next few weeks, we'll be showcasing a series of bilingual books from our friend, Jane Cohen!


As soon as Christmas is over, stores fill with pink and red heart decorations, boxes of candy, roses, and an overwhelming amount of stuffed animals ranging from mini monkeys to life-sized bears. It's hard to navigate the onslaught which is commercialized Valentine's Day. So instead of buying in to the over-capitalized hype, the Barrios family stays in,and we spend Valentine's weekend with the ones we love. 

We celebrated February's week of love with a beautiful story about hearts and happiness. What makes your heart happy? Is it dancing outside with the sun on your cheeks? Listening or playing to music? Cooking? Cuddling? This book gives beautifully-illustrated examples of self-love and familial love, which makes it the perfect way to remember Saint Valentine.

Check out our next installment in Storytime Bilingue, a bilingual celebration of the moments and tender connections that bring people of all ages joy.

My Heart Fills With Happiness / Mi corazón se llena de alegría



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We live on the third planet from the sun in an outer spiral arm of the Milky Way. Absolute and relative location can be very advanced concepts for little ones to understand, and I love how this book is simple, straightforward and yet informative about the earth. It has large, relatable images that shows Earth from crust to core, and a full-page layout of our solar system. There's vocabulary to learn and identify, and for now it is a real aloud text for Maya and Mateo, but in a few years she'll be reading it to me as a nonfiction text. 

Join us as we learn all about our planet!



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Following the presidential inauguration, I thought it fitting to read a book about the White House for storytime bilingue. Read along and learn some interesting and fun facts about the most famous house in the USA!

Did you know there are 132 rooms, 32 bathrooms, many gardens, an oval-shaped room, and even a swimming pool in the White House? This story is filled with interesting facts and surprising characters, like turkeys, bears, and even raccoons, all of whom have been visitors of former presidents. From the first president, to its construction and reconstruction, and parties that hosted 1,000-lb cheeses, this book is filled with interesting tidbits about the White House that will surprise and delight readers of all ages. 

Join us as we learn all about No. 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. 




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We have some new, beautiful, multicultural children's literature to share with you this week. Today's story features a child with an imaginary pet dragon, who makes life more playful, more fun, and more bright. 

Who didn't have an imaginary friend while growing up? Psychologists believe that imaginary friends are actually good for kids. They offer healthy opportunities for children to experience things they can't in real life, and gives them the rare chance to be in complete control, something all children crave. Additionally, imaginary friends help build a child's imagination, and together they can have all sorts of adventures.

The pages of Mi amigo el dragon are filled with amazing illustrations by Hsu Chen, and the story will spark imagination and delight within readers both young and old.





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Children have been reciting Mary Had a Little Lamb for almost 200 hundred years, a nursery rhyme that was actually based upon a little girl who lived on a farm in Sterling, Mass. In 1815, nine-year-old Mary Elizabeth Sawyer nursed a sick little lamb, who eventually returned to full health and they soon became inseparable. And the story goes it really did follow her wherever she went and had a fleece as white as snow. A fellow classmate is credited with penning the familiar words we know today, and it was eventually published by Sarah Josepha Hale under the title "Mary's Lamb" in Poems for Our Children in 1830. A year later, Lowell Mason put the poem to music in the first songbook published in the US intended for use in public schools. The poem even became the first audio recording in history when Thomas Edison recited it on his phonograph in 1877. In Sterling, Mass., they continue to celebrate Mary with a statue of her famous lamb in town, a restored version of her home, and her descendants continue to farm the land that brought us that famous nursery rhyme.

Thought everyone might be familiar with "Mary Had a Little Lamb," have you heard of Maria Had a Little Llama? It's a Spanish twist to the well-known rhyme, set in the picturesque mountains of Peru. This is a bilingual edition of the book, which chronicles and beautifully illustrates the adventures of little Maria and her Llama. 

Join us for our first edition in our new series of books from the ECAF: 

Maria Had a Little Llama 




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