Customer Reviews

Mama! (Spanish Edition)

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For many years I taught ESL and I loved to use books without words, or with very few words. Students could provide the text according to their ability. Now I teach Spanish and French in the elementary school, and I love this book. Not only is it charming and amusing, with a great punch line, children can provide the text to include animals, numbers, and rooms, using that useful word 'hay'.

I have this book in a Japanese translation, and the funny thing is that the dust jacket teaser is longer than the entire text of the book. The first nine spreads show a little boy running from room to room, and calling out "Mama!" in each. It just so happens that in each room of his house there are animals carrying out daily human activities; eating, reading, playing, using the loo... In each room, the number of animals is increases by one, and each room hosts animals of the same family: one hippo, two lions, three giraffes, and so on.
The 10th and final spread has the boy calling out once more to his Mama, this time into the yard. I will not give away the punch line, but it is quite amusing.
Highly recommended - my two and four year olds love it. The artwork is simple and imaginative, and somewhere on each page is the number of focus discretely worked into the scene.
The last sentence is very simple, so I imagine even non-Spanish readers (for the edition on sale by amazon.com) should be able to figure it out, looking up any unfamiliar words on an online Spanish-English dictionary. They could even write it in English underneath, which is what I have done with my Japanese edition.