By Jen Arena
A small girl walks through the jungle working out that she's big next to a bug and tiny next to an elephant, and she picks up a pocketful of Spanish along the way.
Marta walks into the jungle and starts measuring herself against everything she meets. Next to a bug she is grande. Next to an elephant she is pequeña. She's faster than a turtle, slower than a horse, and then a snake slides up and decides Marta looks sabrosa, tasty, very tasty. Marta is ingeniosa, and she gets herself out of it in a way that will make your child laugh out loud. The text is English, and the Spanish word arrives inside the sentence in orange, with the English following right behind it: 'To a bug, Marta is grande. Big, very big.' So your child never has to stop and look anything up. There's a glossary at the back.
It solves the thing that makes most word-learning books a slog. Nobody teaches your child anything. The Spanish word just shows up in the middle of a sentence, printed in orange so you can see it coming, and the English says the same thing one beat later, so the meaning arrives without a translation ever announcing itself. A grown-up with no Spanish at all can read this aloud from cold. And a family that already speaks Spanish gets the pleasure of hearing their own words come out of a book, which is a small thing that is not a small thing.