Booklandia Bilingual Picture Books Subscription Box Review – January 2017

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Booklandia provides quality Spanish and dual-language (English and Spanish) books that both children and adults can enjoy. They start at $25 a month and range from boards books for babies and toddlers to full page hard and soft cover picture books with beautiful images and stories told in both languages.

My package arrived well protected before Christmas. Each book was carefully wrapped, which added to the fun of taking the books out of the box.

Inside the package were two beautifully illustrated books. One of them spoke of wondrous hair, which happens to be long and curly, like mine! The second book was a perfect tale for Christmas time.

“El mejor regalo del mundo”, aka “The Best Gift of All”, is a Christmas-time story from the Dominican Republic.

The book tells the story of a little old lady who keeps herself so busy cooking and cleaning that she does not make time to sit and enjoy her family and friends.

On one side of the page, the English is shown, with an excellent translation on the same 2 – page spread.  The complexity of the story itself is not “See Spot Run”, but closer to “See the splendid dog named Spot scamper through the forest on a crisp fall day.” As an adult who grew up speaking both languages, even I was learning new vocabulary!

The story also included the Three Kings (Wise Men). They dined with the Vieja Belen and convinced her to sit down and enjoy a meal with them. From there, they invited her to join them as they searched for baby Jesus.  She declined to clean her home, but weeks later regretted it and went after them.

The book taught me that in the Dominican Republic, it is believed that she still looks for the Three Kings today and distributes a small gift to children a week after Epiphany ( Three Kings Day). She was the one hope for children from poor families to receive a small gift after being passed over by Santa and the Three Kings. I truly enjoyed learning this bit of Dominican culture I’d not heard of before.

The second book, “Dalia’s Wondrous Hair”, is a lovely burst of color with a sweet and unique story that speaks to the joys of childhood.

The text was not as long in this book as the first, but the story was still very entertaining and well told. Below is both the English and Spanish text on the same page.

Although long text runs still existed and told the muddy tale of a little girl making her hair progressively dirty.

While Dalia’s hair is eventually washed clean, the mud is an essential part of her story which I will not ruin for you! Sign yourself up for a subscription or get one to share with your children today so you too can find out just what makes Dalia’s hair WONDROUS!

I love Booklandia’s bilingual books! This month’s books had lovely illustrations and awesome stories!
Visit Booklandia to subscribe or find out more! 

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