Clever Publishing’s My First Spanish board books have a long life

We go to the dentista and read a revista. For some reason, my wife and I still remember that sentence from an early learner illustrated book that taught basic Spanish words. I don’t even remember the name of the book or anything else from it. It was cute and a book that resonated with our oldest child for a season or two. That was an illustrated book, and by its design was intended to be experienced in its totality. It’s not like a reference book where young readers are intrigued enough to open it to any page and thumb around. Clever Publishing has a trio of My First Spanish Books that hit the bilingual nail on the head for a couple of reasons.

My First Spanish Numeros, Colores, and Libro de Palabras are each sold separately.  They’re board books that extend past the typical younger-skewing board book age. Normally board books are only attractive to those crawlers and pre-k kid who want to be entertained while looking through something and it being socially acceptable to chew on the pages.

Sometimes though, like in those board books from Chris Ferrie, a board book can break through to being entertaining for those young ages, in addition to being educational for slightly older readers. These books from Clever Publishing really do that because they simply list Spanish and English vocabulary, complete with vivid pictures of what’s listed. They also have a couple of statements or ask questions on each page that encourage young readers to seek and find the thing that it’s asking for.

What are the words for noche and dia? Where is the falda? Point to the helicopter. Find the manzana or count all the gusanos are just a couple of examples that the books have in order to engage readers. Each page has about two to five Spanish and English words that are parried with the prompt and illustrations.

Because these My First Spanish books are not as babyish as some of the other ones that we’ve seen they’ll demo up to elementary or even lower middle school second language learners. The illustrations are young and friendly but do not exclusively speak to crawlers. Those non-walking readers will still enjoy these books from Clever Publishing, but they probably won’t be the first ones that they reach for. It’s the education in the books that provide them with extended reach.

For example, any of these books would be at home in any elementary school grade, as well as, an introductory Spanish class in sixth or seventh grade. To validate my thoughts I just showed Libro de Palabras to our upcoming seventh-grade student. His technical knowledge of Spanish is probably much better than mine, although my ability use my pigeon Spanish is better than his. Next year at this time that will be a different story and he’ll be leading the conversation when we go out to eat.

He knew most of the words in that book and was able to recite the English definition when I quizzed him. The traveler and educator in me then reminded him that saying words in a second language will help reinforce their fluency much more than just reading them.

These books from Clever Publishing are a great fit for young learners because of their content and their price. At $8.99 retail a piece, you might be able to find them cheaper online or at Thriftbooks. It’s an affordable entry point into a board book that has the potential to be around for a couple of years as your single spoken language branch out into their first, second language. From there it’s a short step to being a polyglot and being able to write the job description of your choice.

My First Spanish Libro de Palabras, My First Spanish Colores and My First Spanish Numeros are available on Clever Publishing, an imprint of The Quarto Group.

There are affiliate links in this post.