books

As we already hinted at in a previous post, we’ve been busy working on several new projects which will finally see the light of day over the next few months. Here are just a few highlights to get you started:

Consigue que tu hijo sea bilingüe: During our first year at Bilingual Readers we’ve had the opportunity to meet bilingual families from all over the world. Many of these families come from very different backgrounds and circumstances, but many of them had very similar questions about childhood bilingualism and what’s the best way to create a bilingual home. We’d been toying with the idea of starting a parenting collection at Bilingual Readers for a while now, so we thought the first book in this collection should be focussed on addressing the specific needs of parents of bilingual children. We’re very excited to present our first title in this new collection, Consigue que tu hijo sea bilingüe. We’re confident that this clear cut, down to earth book by Barbara Zurer Pearson, a linguist with over twenty years’ experience in researching childhood bilingualism, will provide our readers with many of the answers they’ve been looking for. Official publication date is September 14th, but you can get your copy now at our on-line store.

Fungi: We’re thrilled about this new series of reversible bilingual flip books for children ages 6 and up! This new series follows their daily comings and goings of a community of neighbors living under a fungus farm through the adventures, games and fantasies of two young friends: Frida and Max. Each book in this collection is based on a new animated children’s program called Fungi, which will be appearing worldwide over the course of 2011. In addition to teaching vocabulary in Spanish and English, these books also teach scientific facts and include simple, fun activities that kids can do at home. Not to mention the ridiculously cool design. The first title in this series, Fungi Beauty Salon / Salón de belleza Fungi, will be published in October.

Marina and the Little Green Boy: At School: The little green boy is back for a new adventure! After much protesting, the little green boy has finally convinced Marina’s parents to let him go to school with Marina. But is school ready for the little green boy? There are lots of surprises in store for readers in our favorite book yet in this adorable series.

Marina and the Little Green Boy Interactive E-book: This fall Marina and the Little Green Boy will be making their way into the hearts of iPhone, iPad and iPodTouch owners around the world! You can now download an interactive edition of this book from the iTunes Store.

Now that you’ve gotten a small taste of what’s in store this fall, we hope you’ll come back and visit us often for more details!

Consigue que tu hijo sea bilingüe

• A complete step by step guide for parents who want to raise bilingual children.
• Provides solid scientific arguments about the benefits of raising bilingual children.
• Practical advice about how to to integrate two (or more) languages in your child’s day to day activity.
• Straight forward, down to earth style.
• Testimonies from bilingual parents and children.
• Debunks myths about childhood bilingualism.
• Explains how learning two languages from a young age can help your child’s intellectual and emotional development.
• Winner of the Disney iParenting award.

How to Buy
Spain	US & Canada
You can also visit our online shop.

Following up on the success of the first volume of Cuentos del mundo, this week our latest book Cuentos del mundo 2 hits the shelves of bookstores all over Spain. This new book follows the same structure as the previous volume of Cuentos del mundo: twenty-five bilingual tales from around the world, with highlighted vocabulary words and exercises to help reinforce what you’ve learned. With Cuentos del mundo 2, students of all ages willl have a great time learning English through stories!

You can find all the details here (pdf).

As always, this new title is available in our on-line shop and in bookshops throughout Spain.

We hope you love it as much as we do!

Description:
Title: Cuentos del mundo 2
Authors: Sofía Sánchez Adalid and Ruta Viruta
Translation: William Lyon
ISBN: 978-84-92968-04-6
Pages: 84 pages
Collection: Cuentos del mundo
Size: 22 x 22 cm
Specifications: Softcover with flaps
Price w/VAT: 12.50 €

Today we’re celebrating because our latest book, Cuentos del mundo, is finally in bookstores all over Spain. Cuentos del mundo is the first volume in a series of bilingual stories from around the world, with highlighted vocabulary lists and practical exercises at the end of the book. Learning English has never been so fun!

This collection is a bit different from our previous books in that it’s geared toward English language learners of all ages. So what made us decide to go out on a limb and develop a separate collection just for English language learners? To help you understand our motivation, we’ve decided to let you in on the making of Cuentos del mundo!

We first came across the author and translator of these short stories, Sofía Sánchez Adalid and William Lyon, through the series of bilingual stories they publish every month in the newspaper 20Minutos, with illustrations by Ruta Viruta. As a bilingual publisher, we were very tempted by the idea of publishing an anthology of bilingual stories from around the world, so we got started on this project right away. We met with the authors and discussed the best way to focus the series and how we could help families to make the most of the bilingual stories and their illustrations.

We finally decided on a system that highlights specific vocabulary words and expressions from each story and later invites readers to use the exercises at the end of the book to practice what they’ve learned. Of course we don’t want to give too many secrets away, but the result is an amazing new resource designed to help English language learners improve their English through stories.* It’s also a great collection of folk tales from around the world that will open readers’ minds to new experiences.

While we were busy editing the stories, illustrator Ruta Viruta was hard at work on finding the perfect illustrations for each story and designing a cover which reflects the spirit of families reading together. After many, many hours of hard work, we were thrilled to see printed copies of our newest Bilingual Readers production. And now we’re even more thrilled to see Cuentos del mundo in bookshops, ready to be discovered by story enthusiasts and language learners alike. Whether you’re looking to improve your language skills or just want to read some great stories, we hope you’ll love Cuentos del mundo!

And don’t forget to let us know what you think about this and any of our other books by writing to info@bilingualreaders.com or visiting us on Facebook and Twitter.

*This method is effective for both English and Spanish language learners, but the activities at the end of the book are just for English learners.

We’re thrilled to announce the publication of the latest title in the Two Little Libros collection. This beautifully illustrated box of two 16 page board books by Mike Lowery is the second title in this collection. This time the box contains books which focus on two aspects of the human body: Body Parts and Move Your Body. As you may know from the previous set of Two Little Libros (Sea Animals and Jungle Animals), this fabulous collection is designed to teach young children basic vocabulary in Spanish and English, as well as reasoning skills.

You can find all the details here.

As always, this new title is available in our on-line shop and in bookshops throughout Spain.

We hope you love it as much as we do!

Description:
Title: Body Parts and Move Your Body
Author: Mike Lowery
ISBN: 978-84-937273-7-6
Pages: Slipcase with two 16 page board books
Collection: Two Little Libros
Size: 20 x 20 cm
Specifications: Cloth binding
Price w/VAT: 14.95

After a much needed holiday, the Little Green Boy is back for his next adventure! Today the second title in the Marina and the Little Green Boy series, In the City, is finally available both on our website and in bookshops throughout Spain. This time the Little Green Boy makes his way into the city to discover the many thrilling experiences urban life on planet Earth has to offer. Buses, motorcycles, street lights, Papa’s factory, swings…and even a policeman! There are so many surprises waiting for the Little Green Boy in the city!

Marina and the Little Green Boy: In the City is the second title in a bilingual series about two friends from different cultures who, believe it or not, have a lot to learn from one another.

For more information about Bilingual Readers, please visit us at bilingualreaders.com. If you like what you see, please tell a friend! You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter!

About a month ago we spent a week explaining to our readers why we decided to embark on this crazy journey of starting a bilingual publishing company. We spent much of the Making of Bilingual Readers Week talking about how we came up with the idea for each one of our launch products and why we think they’ll be useful for bilingual families, libraries and classrooms alike. We posted about how children’s books are made to give you  insight into the complex world of children’s book publishing and explain how an intangible idea can be turned into a really cool physical book. We received such a positive response from those posts that we decided to make the “Making of” a regular feature for all new books in our catalogue. So welcome to The Making of Marina and the Little Green Boy/Marina y el niño verde!!!

Many of you know that our first bilingual picture book, Marina and the Little Green Boy/Marina y el niño verde, will be making its way onto the shelves of bookstores all over Spain  this week. This fun little book is the first title in a series about a little girl named Marina who becomes friends with an alien boy who appears in her attic one night. The little green boy knows nothing of Marina’s world so she gets to teach him all about his new home. Yet Marina and her family will also learn a lot from the little green boy in the process.

Picture books are a staple of most children’s book publishers and Bilingual Readers is no exception. This traditional format is a great way of showcasing the classic formula: a well told story + awesome illustrations = an amazing kid’s book. But, like usual, what on the surface appears to be a simple, clear cut and easy to make product is actually the fruit of a lot of hard work and planning involving a team of authors, illustrators, editors and graphic designers.

Like all children’s books, the Marina series started with a fairly simple idea. When we envisioned our first line of products, we knew we wanted to develop a series of characters small children could relate to. Our target audience is just beginning to discover the world, so we thought it would be cool for them to share their first experiences with characters who were having similar experiences at the same time. Because these books were always meant to be a series, the general lines of the entire story would need to be drawn up from the very beginning. We would need a long term commitment from the author and illustrator of this series, which is not always an easy task.

Our first step in making this series a reality was to contact illustrator Miguel Ordóñez. We really love his distinctive style and had been hoping to entice him to get involved with Bilingual Readers for a while. We met over coffee to pitch our idea and were thrilled to see his ethusiasm for the project. The next step was to find an author to develop the story line and Miguel was quick to suggest one of the authors we already had in mind for this project, Antonio Vicente. The relationship between author and illustrator in a long term project like this can be very delicate, so it was especially comforting for us to know that Miguel and Antonio had worked well together previously for other publishers. They also happen to be childhood friends, which seemed especially fitting for a series of books about friendship!

Antonio sent us a draft of the first book and an outline for the entire series, with all sorts of hilarious scenes in which the little green boy learns about life on Earth. We were especially impressed by the underlying themes of tolerance and social integration in this book. It’s amazing what small children are able to understand if it is explained to them in a clear and simple way, and Antonio has a true gift for explaining how easy and fun it can be to make friends with someone who is different from you.

Miguel also sent us sketches of the main characters and a few scenes from the book, and it was amazing to see how well his illustrations made the story come alive. He spent several months developing the characters and mapping out each scene from the book one by one. Miguel is also doing the graphic design and layout for this series, so when he sent us the first drafts of the full book layout Marina and the Little Green Boy/Marina y el niño verde already looked much like it does today. During the translation and editing process we read and reread the text time and time again in both languages. We read to ourselves, out loud to others, did all the voices and slashed and tweaked the text here and there. The finished product is a really cool book we hope you’ll love as much as we do!

image credit: social media roi, via flickr

Thanks to the possibilities of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, we’ve been able to connect with bilingual families and communities all over the world. As part of this international bilingual community, we’re able to share our thoughts on bilingualism and news about our company, as well as learn all about all sorts of bilingual resources from so many of our readers.

This week we thought we’d take our social networking one step further by creating a separate Facebook fan page for each of our first three products: Easy Alphabet!/¡Abecedario fácil!, Sea Animals/Animales del mar and Jungle Animals/Animales de la selva and Marina and the Little Green Boy/Marina y el niño verde. Most of you are familiar with Facebook fan pages, so I don’t have to explain that part of our motivation is to get the word out about these new bilingual books in order to reach more families. Fans will also have the opportunity to upload fan photos spotlighting our books, which is a great way for us to get to know you better. But we are also really excited about using these fan pages as a way to get to know your opinion of our books. What do you like? What would you change? How can we better meet your needs in the future? Any cool ideas about how to use our books in new and interactive ways? We’d love to hear from you, so please don’t hesitate to let us know what you think!

image credit: school bus school bus school bus, via flickr

My husband is Spanish and I am from Australia. At home we always speak to our son in English because we feel it will be easier for our son to learn Spanish since we live in Spain. We are starting to consider options for when he starts school next year. Would it be best for us to send him to a foreign (American or British) school? Would he feel obligated to correct his classmates’ English? Could he have similar problems in a Spanish school?

Dear Parents,
From what I understand you have chosen the ONE HOME, ONE LANGUAGE (OHOL) model: only one language is spoken at home by all family members. This system has the great advantage of providing an important stimulus for the non-community language (the language which is not frequently spoken in the community you live in), which usually becomes weaker over time and often disappears from the child’s productive range (some children stop speaking this language with their parents on a daily basis when they feel more secure communicating in their “stronger” or dominant language).

You are right about one fundamental thing: your son will receive enough linguistic input to learn Spanish from the community outside your home (in the park, with his grandparents and cousins, on tv, in shops…). You are also right to be concerned about the next phase: the school you choose is a very strong linguistic stimulant so it is important to bear this in mind.

Your question addresses one of the most frequent matters affecting OHOL homes: Should we continue to give priority to the non-community language? How should we stimulate Spanish? What kind of repercussions would sending my child to a primarily English or bilingual school have on my child’s social development?

The first thing you need to know is that there is no “right” answer to this question, and there is no obligation to make a decision and stick with it no matter what. I always use a graphic example to illustrate this matter: achieving a balance between both languages. All bilingual parents want their children to develop a balance between both languages, so that they feel just as comfortable using both their languages. In order to achieve this goal there is just one secret: to design a scale on which the linguistic needs of each child in both languages balance one another out. Imagine a scale with weights for English on one side and for Spanish on the other. The weight we give to each language should depend on two variables: the time your child spends on activities in each language and the need for active communication during these activities (Watching TV does not require your child to speak, so it is just a source of passive input, while playing soccer with Spanish neighbors does require your child to speak and games like “Who’s Who” are even better for this sort of active language use.) The more balanced the scale, the more balanced your child’s linguistic activity will be.

Your child’s education is a major source of weight for this scale. Your child will not only spend many hours a day in this environment, but the school you choose will also define many of his social relationships, which are one of the strongest communicative stimulants, since a child truly develops his linguistic abilities when he has to convince others, negotiate, complain, show confidence, etc. A school where more than 60% of classes are given in the non-community language (this is not always the case in so called bilingual schools, but it is the case in schools like The American School, King’s College, British Council, etc.) are a great opportunity to preserve this language. This sort of education also helps with the development of literacy skills, which are of the utmost importance when defining linguistic abilities in any language.

At this point, your son has a lot of weight on the English side of the scale. For a few years longer (until he is around five), one of the most important weights is the communication in your home (repetitive activities like bathtime, eating, reading…), but soon your child’s friends and after school activities will become more important and it will be harder to maintain this balance. It can be difficult to gain admission to some bilingual schools when a child is older so, although you may not have an immediate need for this sort of extra English input now, you may want to consider looking into this option.

In any case, all bilingual families should bear in mind that  there are other ways of adding weight to the scales: after school activities (especially small group activities and team sports), contact with the community of origen (feel free to contact us if you need contacts in Madrid) and hiring an English speaking nanny are other alternatives. It’s hard to predict which way the scales will tip, so we should always be open to changing our strategy as we go along, putting more emphasis on one language or the other according to each child’s needs.

Of course we should also realize that creating this sort of linguistic environment for our child and even for ourselves as parents will define us to a certain extent as a different sort of family, and a unique child. Like it or not, our extended families and neighbors will have an opinion about this, and we will have to do our best to make this situation feel as natural as possible for our children so that they don’t feel awkward. If you begin to notice that your son’s Spanish level is affecting his social development, there is always time to move the weights around a bit and this can be done as you go along.

As to whether or not your son will feel obligated to correct his peers’ English, I wouldn’t worry too much about that. Young children don’t tend to correct one another because communication generally takes priority over correct speech and each child tends to correct himself in order communicate with others. Also, if your child begins to correct his classmates’ English, he opens himself up to criticism of his Spanish, so that sort of situation generally works itself out.

On the other hand, I believe there are other factors to be considered when choosing a school for your child, such as your economic situation, proximity, day to day quality of life, the specific needs of each child and family, whether or not you plan on moving to another country at some point, etc. I’m sure you are keeping all of this in mind, but it is just a reminder for all those bilingual families out there who are faced with similar issues.

If you do decide to choose a primarily English school, it would be a good idea to include a few extra curricular activities to reinforce your son’s Spanish skills, although that will be easy if you live in Spain. If you decide to send your son to an all Spanish school or a bilingual school with 30% of classes in English (we’ll include a more detailed analysis of this option in a later post), you will have to make more of an effort to encourage your son’s English language development. Whatever you choose, you’ll be successful if you make sure to keep those language scales balanced. Good luck with your bilingual family. You already have two of the most important tools for success: intuition and the will to succeed.

Dr. Orlanda Varela is a Child Psychiatrist and the Coordinator of the educational project for Bilingual Families at SINEWS Multilingual Therapy Institute in Madrid. SINEWS organizes bilingualism workshops for parents in Madrid, as well as personalized speech therapy sessions to bilingual families with specific language development problems. For more information, please visit sinews.es.

I’m afraid I’ve always been a bit of a summer addict. When most people are busy complaining about the heat and hiding out in air conditioned buildings, I’ve always been happy to break out my little sundresses, coat myself in sunscreen (a girl’s got to protect her skin after all) and enjoy all that fabulous sunshine. So after waving goodbye to my parents at the Madrid airport last week and noticing that it’s no longer light outside when my alarm clock rings at 7:01 am, I have to admit it would be very tempting for me to develop a case of the post vacation blues. And then I remember something that makes me almost want to speed the whole end of summer/start of fall process along: our new (and first) catalogue of bilingual books and games is set to launch in just six weeks!

While it may be the end of summer now, this fall is the start of something big for Bilingual Readers, and I can’t wait to see the books we’ve been working so hard on for so long in the hands of the bilingual families they were created for! That’s one of the many reasons we were so excited to see our first complete sample copies of Easy Alphabet!/¡Abecedario fácil! arrive from the printers last Friday. Our hands were trembling as we opened up the box and examined each item in this bilingual early literacy kit one at a time. Then yesterday we received another package from the printers with samples of Two Little Libros: Jungle Animals and Sea Animals. We could hardly believe it ourselves, but both the books and the kit turned out exactly how we envisioned them, so we just had to post a few pictures to give you all a sneak peak of what you can look forward to in October. We hope you love them as much as we do!