I just finished a contract where I was teaching advanced French to high school students. It was great practice for my guttural language skills and allowed me to read their library of French books. In this class library was a couple of dozen children’s books of all ages, with many of them being aimed at lower elementary school. I love it when I teach a foreign language and the teacher has a library of books in that language for students who are learning it. Dia de Disfraces is one of those illustrated books that are great for Spanish classrooms for a couple of reasons.
This is where I will invoke my Christmas Music Test. Christmas music can be great. However, Christmas music can also be incredibly annoying. A subpar musician, singer or group can release a Christmas song or LP and it’ll be played by radio or on streaming at some point in time simply because it’s a Christmas song. Witness, Simply Having a Wonderful Christmastime as proof that no matter how bad a song is, it’s guaranteed to be heard and to somehow merit the ‘classic’ label in a generation or two. I would also posit that Finally, It’s Christmas by Hanson passes the Christmas music test because those songs are great and don’t get tiresome regardless of what time of year you hear them.
Thus, Dia de Disfraces has a story that reverberates with students. They can be younger students who are same age as the book’s Spanish-speaking target audience or older students who won’t partake in the same activities as the book’s main character. The main character in Dia de Disfraces is a young girl in early elementary school who wants to dress up for her school’s upcoming dress-up day. When the big day arrives she dresses up like a rabbit, but is disappointed when nobody else dresses up and they make fun of her when they see her.
The theme of being the nail that sticks out, or receiving unwanted attention, is a fear and concern that every young elementary student has. There’s a period in one’s academic life when they don’t want to stick out and it shifts for some people to where they seek out the attention. However, in early elementary school being the one kid who is not like everyone else is what most kids try to avoid. I don’t make the rules,
As this girl hides behind a tree she sees another one of her classmates arrive in costume and the two become best friends. Ironically, he comes to school dressed as a carrot, or a zanahoria, as our Spanish students will come to define. The art in Dia de Disfraces is the big style of rounded heads and circular bodies that early elementary ages enjoy. The pages have lots of white spaces in-between the art and the book’s story has a patient, easy-going vibe that is perfect for story or bedtime.
Where second language learners will enjoy this book is actually seeing Spanish in action. They can define new words. They will see verb tenses in action, like era, vesti, sentia, tenia and so many more examples of past, and future imperative and other instances of verbs being used in instances other than the present tense. It’s very important to know your verbs, but knowing and using them correctly in their various tenses is what separates being able to communicate from being on the path to fluency. It’s that fluency in a second or third language that can open up any number of employment opportunities in various industries simply due to being fluent in that language.
Those opportunities start more efficiently when they’re done at a younger age with full immersion and real-world second language tools like Dia de Disfraces. There’s no English translation for readers to default to, it’s all Spanish and will make readers attempt to read the words and learn them for what they are. If the book were in Spanish and English then our lazy nature would take over and readers would compare the Spanish word to the English word and learn nothing. Instead, this is the best kind of learning. It’s a fun, children’s illustrated book that dares students of Spanish to learn it. It’s a children’s illustrated book that’s meant for early elementary ages, I should be able to read this, those middle school students will think. They’ll fall into the rabbit hole, but let them, and make them define the words that they don’t know, use the verbs in the tenses that they’re used in the book, and watch their big brains get even bigger.
Dia de Disfraces is by Blanca Gomez and is available on Abrams Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Abrams Books.
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