By Susan Middleton Elya
Eighteen nursery rhymes you already know by heart, rewritten so a Spanish word lands on the rhyme.
These are the rhymes you can already say in your sleep, tilted sideways. Mary's little lamb is now María's little oveja. Twinkle, twinkle, small estrella. Three little gatitos have lost their mitoncitos. Old Mother Hubbard is Old Madre Rosario, and Little Jack Horner is Young Juan Ramón. Eighteen of them, each one an English rhyme with the Spanish word set in bold and usually sitting right where the rhyme lands, so your child hears it whether they mean to or not. Juana Martinez-Neal's art is soft and grainy, acrylic and colored pencil on textured paper, full of real-looking children's faces. There's a glossary at the back with each Spanish word, what it means, and how to say it.
Your child already has these rhymes in their body. The rhythm, the ending, the whole shape of the thing is stored. So when a Spanish word drops into the slot where an English one lived, the meaning comes free, carried by a rhyme they've heard two hundred times. That's a very cheap way to hand somebody a language. It's also the book to reach for if a grandparent or a tía speaks Spanish and you don't, because you can hand it over and let them read while you listen.