Bilingual Board Books {Multicultural Children’s Book Day}

Do you live in a bilingual household or simply want to teach your kids a little Spanish?  Bilingual board books are a wonderful way to introduce your children to Spanish at an early age, and the text is simple enough for kids (and adults!) that have only a rudimentary understanding of the language.

Disclosure: I received complimentary copies of Lil’ Libros books; however, all opinions are my own.

It doesn’t matter what age your children are, they will be instantly drawn to Lil’ Libros board books.  The artwork is incredibly engaging: colorful and eye-catching without being too “busy.”

Lil’ Libros produces beautiful “first concept” books: in other words, books that teach about basic ideas like numbers, colors, body parts, etc.  As your child is mastering these early concepts, why not teach them in Spanish as well?  You don’t need to be a fluent speaker to teach your children at this level.  You are introducing simple vocabulary with self-explanatory illustrations, so you can learn right along with your child!

And if you are bilingual yourself, you will appreciate how high-quality these books are, and the fact that they teach culture right alongside the language.  Thankfully these days it is getting easier to find Spanish children’s books here in the US; however, the vast majority of these are translations from English.  So even as you worry about how good the translation is going to be, you know that the book will likely teach your child nothing about Hispanic culture.

Lil’ Libros solves this dilemma by brilliantly making use of prominent aspects of Hispanic culture in their books.  For example, children learn about body parts through pictures of Mexico’s famous lucha libre wrestlers (brilliant!) and learn their numbers with representations of artist Frida Kahlo.

I highly recommend Lil’ Libros books to anyone wanting to teach their little ones Hispanic culture and beginning Spanish vocabulary.

Are you worried about the lack of diversity in children’s literature?  So were Mia Wenjen from Pragmatic Mom and Valarie Budayr from Jump Into a Book/Audrey Press.  That’s why they created Multicultural Children’s Book Day, a unique event whose mission is to not only raise awareness for the kid’s books that celebrate diversity, but to get more of these of books into classrooms and libraries.

Young readers need to see themselves within the pages of a book and experience other cultures, languages, traditions and religions within the pages of a book. We encourage readers, parents, teachers, caregivers and librarians to follow along the fun book reviews, author visits, event details, a multicultural children’s book linky and via our hashtag (#ReadYourWorld) on Twitter and other social media.

Multicultural Children’s Book Day 2016 Medallion Level Sponsors! #ReadYourWorld

Platinum: Wisdom Tales Press * StoryQuest Books * Lil Libros

Gold: Author Tori Nighthawk * Candlewick Press * Bharat Babies

Silver: Lee and Low Books * Chronicle Books * Capstone Young Readers T

Tuttle Publishing, NY Media Works, LLC/KidLit TV

Bronze: Pomelo Books * Author Jacqueline Woodson * Papa Lemon Books * Goosebottom Books * Author

Gleeson Rebello * ShoutMouse Press * Author Mahvash Shahegh * China Institute.org * Live Oak Media

Multicultural Children’s Book Day CoHosts

Multicultural Children’s Book Day has 12 amazing Co-Hosts (including yours truly!):

All Done Monkey, Crafty Moms Share, Educators’ Spin on It, Growing Book by Book, Imagination Soup, I’m Not the Nanny, InCultureParent, Kid World Citizen, Mama Smiles, Multicultural Kid Blogs, Spanish Playground

I’ll be reviewing another set of books in the next few days, plus come back on January 26 to see all of the reviews from the Multicultural Children’s Book Day reviewers!