Since having kids I love exploring and finding books to read to them. Well, at the moment it’s just Stela listening in, since Tesa is too little. Stela and I love our story time before going to sleep. Well, I do, but being completely honest, if I get a night off in a week I don’t mind. What drives me pretty insane is reading the same book all the time. I mean we rob the library, have tons of books at home, yet we are stuck on one book for a week. And there are always the same questions on the same pages that I have trouble answering. I mean why do I (most of the time) end up looking like a dork in my kid’s eyes when I have trouble explaining even the simplest things. Well, anyway the fact is we like to read and I manage to wiggle myself out of all the traps until the next evening. Besides it is so great to see how she follows the story and knows exactly what is comping up next. Why wouldn’t she when she hears it a gazillion times.
For the past month our repertoire included the book Bosley goes to the beach, by Timothy Johnson. It is a bilingual story in both English and Spanish. Now Stela speaks neither, so she heard it in the third version, but still she enjoyed hearing about a cute little bear getting ready and spending a lovely day at the beach. What I want in the stories we read is for them to also have a lesson, to educate. So, not only is this a great way to learn another language – we’ll be using it again once we start on English and I hope Spanish gets included at some point too. I won’t push, but I love Spanish, I taught myself a little bit. Yes, I am that cool. And the book made me realize how little I still remember and it was clear I’d barely be able to survive if some freakish circumstances led me to live in Spain.
Stela and I loved reading the book, talking about going to the beach, oh bummer we have to wait till September but non the less. Bosley goes to the beach gets two thumbs up from Stela and I have to agree; nice story, lovely illustrations, lovably character that is easy to connect with and an opportunity to learn a language. What also works great is that the story is in paperback, easier and lighter to take it around. And it’s nice enough you don’t mind reading it more than once and as far as I can tell opens no weird unanswerable questions.