Eric Carle
Rayo-HarperCollins (2008)
ISBN 9780060011116
Reviewed by Cayden (age 4) and Max (age 2) Aures and Mom for Reader Views (8/08)
“El Canguro Tiene Mama?” is the Spanish edition of “Does a Kangaroo Have a Mother Too?” by popular children’s author Eric Carle. The book asks whether kangaroos, lions, giraffes and other animals have mothers and then, of course, responds in the affirmative that they all do.
Cayden: “This book is in Spanish!”
Cayden: “I think I know that word!”
Cayden: “Let’s guess what animal it is before we turn the page. Sometimes Spanish and English words sound kind of the same.”
Max: “A giraffe!”
Cayden: “In Spanish it is a jirafa. See, that kind of sounds the same”
Cayden: “I liked the pictures in the book and I liked learning the new Spanish words!”
Max: “Read again!”
Cayden: “Mom, can we read it again? I bet I know what all of the words will be this time!”
Parent’s comments:
My children’s Spanish vocabulary is somewhat limited to what they have learned on Dora and Diego, but they had a pretty easy time translating the animal’s names into English. The page before asks whether a certain animal has a mom and the next page shows the picture of that animal and their babies. They had a lot of fun trying to guess what animal was going to be before we turned the page based on the Spanish word for that animal. By the second time through, Cayden only had one that he wasn’t sure of.
The illustrations are the traditional Eric Carle style and are fun to look at! We recommend “El Canguro Tiene Mama?” not just for Spanish-speaking families but to those who want to expose their children to other languages at an early age.
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