Celina Penovi's Paperbacks

A few months back I received a few copies of Celina Penovi's Spanish to English paperback storybooks. I had meant to review them within that week but they got buried away and I completely forgot about them—that is, until today.

While my Spanish is rusty at best, I remember what it was like growing up in a bilingual area and struggling to learn the language just so I could understand what was being said around me.

That's why I was excited to discover Celina's three storybooks: Guess It If You Can!, Scrambled Breakfast, and The Clumsy Stork.

In each storybook your children can learn to read Spanish by comparing words in one paragraph with words in another paragraph.

The stories are simple and entertaining (often in rhyme) and the illustrations, by Dario Salvi are both light-hearted and comical.

That being said, I really believe these books are best for children who already have a basic understanding of their second language—whether it's Spanish or English.

Your children won't be able to learn proper pronunciations with the books and from what I can tell, some of the translations are loosely translated so it's best to have someone with a basic understanding of the language to read along with the kids.

For instance, in one introduction she says "To my four boys, blah blah" but when translated into Spanish, she left out the number four altogether. It's nowhere to be found in the translated paragraph. Another thing is that like English words, some Spanish words have dual meanings which can be confusing for children just learning the language.

Disclosure: I was given a sample to review. This is "my opinion" of the product. I was not paid to give a positive review.