Dual books

 Dual-language books are books that have text written in two languages. I first came across a dual-language book when I was looking for materials for my children, and my first reaction was that "in some cases" I didn't really identify with the translation of the text. Besides, I was going to read those books to my children, so I didn't need any translation.

Now I have to admit I was wrong; dual-language books are very useful during the process of learning a second language. There are always some terms we might not be familiar with due to our country of origin. For example, if someone says "I like cacahuates," the word used in Mexico for "peanuts," I would use "I like mani," as we say in Peru.

However, there are many high-quality books that use more generic Spanish. One of my children's favorites, and one of the dual-language books, is "Donde esta lupita" ("It's my birthday!"), published by me and mi publishing but also sold through Growing Bilingual. These books use very simple sentences to increase Spanish vocabulary, have full-color pictures, and are of high quality.

Now that my seven-year-old son is practicing reading in Spanish, these dual-language books are very helpful. He says that if he doesn't know the meaning of a word, he simply looks it up in English on the same page. That makes it fun!

A treasure that we found and that my son already knows by heart, is Ten Little Puppies of the great writers Alma Flor Ada  and Isabel Campoy.

The following is an example of the Spanish portion of the first pages of this dual book:

"I had ten puppies" "I had nine puppies"
I had ten puppies, I had nine puppies
I had ten puppies of the nine that remained
I had ten puppies of the nine that remained
One went to see the snow, one ate a cake 
and only nine remained and only eight remained
nine, nine, nine» eight, eight, eight»

As you can see, there are quality and fun books out there. Many dual-language books can also be found in libraries and can even be searched for online before borrowing.