The Missing Cat with Book (Berlitz Kids Love to Learn) (Spanish Edition) [Audio Cassette]

Globe Pequot Press (Author), Chris L. Demarest (Author)

Book Description

Series: Berlitz Kids Love to Learn

Combining imaginative storylines, lovable characters, and captivating "real life" situations, this innovative series includes three titles: The Missing Cat, A Visit to Grandma, and The Five Crayons. This series offers families with children from ages 4 to 9 a diverse range of basic words and phrases to form the foundation of a core vocabulary. Featuring illustrations by the award-winning artist Chris Demarest, each package includes:
-- A 64-page full-color paperback book, divided into eight episodes
-- A 60-minute, corresponding audiocassette with complete narration, audio dictionary, and eight original songs
-- Song lyrics
-- Dual-language picture dictionary and word list
-- Parents' letter

A lively tale with an ending children will enjoy, the story features over 200 words and phrases, including days of the week, numbers, family names, feelings, action words, present and past tense.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Kids up to age 9 will appreciate this very basic introduction to Spanish which features one Nicholas, who looks for a missing family pet. Included in this boxed kit is a 64-page book, a picture dictionary, and a single cassette which can be used either independently or with a parent's assistance. -- Midwest Book Review

About the Author

In January 2003, the renowned Berlitz Publishing became part of the Langenscheidt Group. The Langenscheidt Publishing Group, the premier group of map and travel companies, offers over 4,000 North American and international street maps, road maps, atlases, language-learning, bilingual dictionaries, and travel-related products covering countries, cities, and languages in every continent. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Audio Cassette: 64 pages
• Publisher: Berlitz Guides; Book and Cassette edition (October 1996)
• Language: Spanish
• ISBN-10: 2831557143
• ISBN-13: 978-2831557144
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 7.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,870,634 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #88 in Books > Books on Cassette > Children's Books > Educational
  • #90 in Books > Books on Cassette > Reference > Study Guides

More About the Author

Born in the 1950s, Chris Demarest was influenced by both his parents' artist abilities. His mother once worked for the Walt Disney animation studios and his father was a life-long doodler. In the upstairs attic of his parents' house, Demarest's father escaped to draw pictures of airplanes. That passion led his father to join the US Army Air Force in WWII, flying the dangerous missions from India into China, referred to as 'the Hump".

Demarest spent most of his years in publishing doing a cartoon, light-hearted style, but tapped into his youth and began working on a series of adventure books. Firefighters A to Z became a NY Time Best Book 2000. Documenting more firefighting careers, USCG work and the Hurricane Hunters, Demarest does all his research first hand. In 2004, he flew with the Hurricane Hunters out of Biloxi Mississippi into Hurricane Ivan, a Cat 4 storm.

His latest book, ARLINGTON: A History of Arlington National Cemetery will be published by Roaring Brook Press, Fall 2010.

Contact info: [e-mail]
Website: http://www.pbase.com/chrisdemarest
603 460-3095

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great value -- easy and enjoyable way for kids to learn!, April 4, 2003

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Missing Cat with Book (Berlitz Kids Love to Learn) (Spanish Edition) (Audio Cassette)

The Nicholas stories on tape are very easy to learn from because they are read slowly and clearly. They also keep the sentence structures pretty simple and repeat words and phrases a lot, which might be annoying for a book in your native language, but is very helpful to children learning a second language. My children don't like to listen to regular Spanish books on tape (often spoken quickly and the words seem to run together, more complex vocabulary, verb conjugations, etc.). However, they enjoy all the tapes in this series, even after we've heard them 50 times each.

My son is in kindergarten in a Spanish immersion school, so we always keep these tapes playing in the car to give him extra practice listening to Spanish. The tape has a dictionary portion with 50 words from the story, spoken first in English and then twice in Spanish. This might sound dry, but our kids really like this portion of the tape. Even our 20-month-old repeats both the English and the Spanish words during the dictionary section.

The story is read only in Spanish on the tape -- this has worked fine for us. However, the book is written in both Spanish and English, so if you wanted to enhance your child's understanding of what they were hearing, you could read them the story occasionally in English.

I would recommend first buying The Missing Cat and then A Visit to Grandma before buying The Five Crayons. (The music on The Five Crayons, while perhaps more culturally authentic, has some fast songs and is sung in a style that makes it a little more difficult to understand the words). In general, I've found that for my children to understand the songs, it helped a lot if I sat down with the book and read the English translations of the lyrics to them.

Overall, I'd say all that this series of books and tapes are a very good value -- lots of learning to be gained for a very small amount of money. If they made more tapes in this series, we would certainly buy them!