Monday, January 3, 2022

Review of Letters A to Z by Susie Jaramillo


From the Emmy-nominated, award-winning bilingual preschool series Canticos, comes Letters A to Z, a part of the Canticos Bilingual Firsts collection.

Learn the letters of the alphabet in both English and Spanish. Includes the Spanish letters of Ch, Ll, and Ñ, and the words associated with them. Complete with beautiful illustrations, this book is a great way to make learning opposites with your little chickie special and unique in not one, but two languages.

Concept: Letters, Words.

Format:
• 6" x 6" board book format perfect for little readers.
• English and Spanish on the same spread.
• "This book belongs to" page to personalize with a child’s name.

"Canticos resonates with parents who want to raise multilingual children through quality, appealing content." ― NBC

"Good books not only teach your child about different cultures and their traditions, they are also a great way to help your child pick up new vocabulary and information about different regions around the world. Canticos...is a great place to start" ― Motherly

"Susie Jaramillo created a media company with an educational, cross-cultural, and intergenerational mission." ― School Library Journal

"¿Qué hacer cuando los niños no quieren dormir? La colección bilingüe Canticos de Susie Jaramillo reúne tiernas canciones de cuna de nuestra infancia." ― People en Español

Children can also watch our bilingual videos on the Canticos channel!

Beloved by kids, parents and educators, Canticos is the #1 bilingual preschool brand.



(affiliate link included)

**My thoughts**
This bilingual Spanish and English book has super, super cute illustrations in it. You journey through the alphabet in both languages. On the left side, you have the capital letter and an English word beginning with that letter. Its Spanish translation is underneath. Then on the right side, you have the lowercase letter and a Spanish word beginning with that letter. Its English translation is underneath. The pictures on both sides fit together into one large picture. 

I keep going back and forth on this. I feel like the children are not going to connect the uppercase and lowercase letters as being the same letters because you are going to pronounce them differently, depending on the language being used. At the same time, you could maybe read it in a way that associates the two. And then all of the English nouns are capitalized to go with their associated capital letter, which is not how we normally treat nouns in English. We only capitalize proper nouns, unless they are at the beginning of a sentence. German is the language that always capitalizes its nouns. And then finally, it's a personal pet peeve that everyone uses ice cream for the letter I. I know that it's something that children love and relate to. But when we are teaching kids their phonics, we always start with short i, not long i. And with Earth, yes, the word does start with the letter E, but it's an r-controlled vowel and not the short e that we are teaching kids in the beginning. Because of the inclusion of ch and ll as Spanish letters in this book, I felt like the authors were trying to encourage learning those beginning sounds, so I would personally prefer to have the early ones that we teach.

Otherwise, it is a fun way to learn the vocabulary for so many words in both languages. And I have to reiterate that I absolutely adore these illustrations. I would still probably add it to my classroom library, because those illustrations are going to draw in the children to looking at it. I just think I would have to get creative if using it as an alphabet/phonetic teaching tool.

Thank you to the publisher for fulfilling my review request via NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

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