SIPAPA Reads! Best Spanish Books for Kids

Children's Joke Books

I remember devouring the Bennet Cerf joke books when I was in 2nd grade.  Now my soon to be 2nd grader is begining to tell jokes.  Los Chistes Favoritios de los Niños is a 9 book series of books just for kids.  Amazon customers give these books rave reviews for both their humor and as a novel way of encouraging children to read in Spanish:

Los Chistes  Favoritos de Los Niños: 1
ISBN: 9686801405

Los niños también aprovechan la mejor medicina del alma. LA RISA.  Y esta colección contiene solamente chistes blancos para los pequeños. Hágalos sonreír y divertirse coloreando los dibujos interiores.

Children also take advantage of the best medicine for the soul - laughter.  And this collection contains jokes just for children.  Make your children smile and enjoy themselves as they color in the drawings in the book.

Buff Up Your Spanish

If you're a heritage speaker (that's a nice euphamism for us Hispanics who are more fluent in Spanglish than the King's Spanish) or if you just want to stay a step ahead of your kids in Spanish grammer, the "Practice Makes Perfect" series by Dorothy Richmond and Gilda Nissenberg for McGraw-Hill may be just for you.

Summer Reading: After 5th Grade

Here's the summer reading list for exiting 5th grades and where to get them - Amazon, other websites and public libraries.

No me llamo Angélica / My Name is Not Angelica
O'Dell
ISBN: 8427932227

The planter who buys you will put you to work in his household or in the sugar-cane fields. In the fields, under the hot sun, slaves don't last long, perhaps a year. So show your white teeth, Raisha, smile a lot, and don't say anything unless you're asked.

Snatched from her home in Africa, sixteen-year-old Raisha begins her new life on the island of St. John's as a slave on Jost van Prok's plantation. Even as a sheltered house servant, Raisha cannot ignore the terrible suffering of other slaves. But is she willing to risk her life to help a group of runaways?

This is a compelling account of the great slave rebellion of 1733, and of one daring young woman's suffering, strength, and ultimate triumph of will.

Available through: Amazon    Palo Alto Library

 

El cayo / The Cay
Taylor
ISBN: 8427932502

When the freighter on which they are traveling is torpedoed by a German submarine during World War II, an adolescent white boy, blinded by a blow on the head, and an old black man are stranded on a tiny Caribbean island where the boy acquires a new kind of vision, courage, and love from his old companion.

Available through: Amazon

Summer Reading: After 5th Grade - Horrible Science!

Nick Arnold - Esa Horrible ciencia / Horrible Science Series

Nick Arnold has written HUNDREDS of books about science. His Horrible Science books cover everything from blood to bugs, poisons to pus - it's all gory, yucky stuff and we love it.  Read more about Nick...here

Esas Mortiferas Enfermedades / Deadly Diseases
Nick Arnold
ISBN: 8427220901

¡Los aspectos más sobrecogedores de la ciencia!
¡Esas mortíferas enfermedades te dejarán temblando un buen rato!
Si quieres descubrir:
¿Que le ocurrió a una enfermera que se bebió una diarrea?
¿Que científico utilizó globos oculares para alimentar bacterias?
¿Por qué el cólera hace que la piel se vuelva de color azul?

Si crees que tu estómago resistirá la parte mas nauseabunda de la ciencia, sigue leyendo mientras nosotros te explicamos los detalles más horribles sobre algunas enfermedades. Desde el resfriado común a la temible viruela, descubre qué le ocurre a tu cuerpo cuando sufre un buen ataque de gérmenes. Con estremecedoras notas aclaratorias y fichas con datos sobre peligrosos virus, unas divertidas ilustraciones y curiosos tests, Esas mortíferas enfermedades rebosa de información.¡La ciencia nunca ha sido tan divertida!

Available through:    Amazon     Addall.com

Summer Reading: After 4th Grade

Summer Reading List for after 4th grade (incoming 5th graders)

Kike
Perera
ISBN-10: 8434812886

Grade 4-8 A fascinating novel of the Hispanic immigrant experience in the United States. While this is a historical story of Cuban immigrants, it could be the story of any Latin American immigrant child. The difficulties and misunderstandings and the challenges of adjustment and sheer survival in the United States are told with humor and empathy in this first-person narrative. The style is idiomatic, often very funny, and down-to-earth, and will capture the attention of young readers.

Available through: Amazon    Palo Alto Library    Mountain View Library

 

Summer Reading: After 3rd Grade

Look for the Summer Reading List for Exiting 3rd Graders  (Incoming 4th  Graders) on the SIPAPA bookstore.

Here's the full list and where to get them - Amazon, Palo Alto & Mountain View libraries.

Geronimo Stilton
series

Geronimo Stilton is a best-selling children's book series written by Geronimo Stilton. In the series, the title character is a talking mouse who lives in New Mouse City on Mouse Island. A best-selling author, he works as a journalist for the fictional newspaper The Rodent's Gazette. He has a younger sister named Thea Stilton, a cousin named Trap Stilton, and a favorite nephew, nine-year-old Benjamin Stilton. Geronimo is a nervous, mild-mannered mouse who would like nothing better than to live a quiet life, but he keeps getting involved in far-away adventures with Thea, Trap, and Benjamin. The books are written as though they are autobiographical adventure stories. The original publisher is Edizioni Piemme in Milan, Italy. Scholastic, Inc. publishes the English language version.

The series originated in Italy and has become the most popular children's book series in that country. The books have been translated into 35 languages. Source: Wikipedia

Available through: Amazon    Mountain View Library

Summer Reading: After 2nd Grade

The Summer Reading list for After 2nd Grade (Incoming 3rd Graders) is now available at the SIPAPA bookstore.

Here's the full list and where to get them - Amazon, Palo Alto & Mountain View libraries.

This is the time when children start reading series books.  The following are among the most popular.

Junie B. Jones
Barbara Park
Series

Junie Beatrice Jones, Junie B. Jones or "Junie B." as she called for short, is a five-to six-year-old American girl. She hates shopping, except when the shopping is done in a supermarket. Junie B. loves ice cream, and her mother made it a rule for Junie not to yell at her for ice cream while at the supermarket.

Junie B., a first grade student, is very inquisitive, as she likes to ask her teacher (to whom she refers only as "Mr. Scary", who doesn't even scare her hardly) a lot of questions about every school subject. She fears challenges at times but mostly meets them successfully.

Junie B.'s best friends in kindergarten are Lucille, an upper-class girl who is accustomed to being pampered by her grandmother, and Grace (to whom Junie B. refers as "'that' Grace"), an ahtletic, African-American girl. The person she dislikes the most is "that meanie Jim," the class bully, whom she befriends on Valentine's when she is in kindergarten. In first grade her friends are most of the students in her class. Lucille is in Junie B.'s class, but she has made new friends with two twins. Her nemesis is May (she calls her Tattletale May). Source: wikipedia

Available through: Amazon    Mountain View Library

Summer Reading: After 1st Grade

Here's the full list for children entering 2nd grade and where to get them - Amazon, Palo Alto & Mountain View libraries.

Me gustaría tener
Flor Ada
ISBN-10: 1581051948

Me gustaria tener. . lists the various things ``I would like to have . . .'' Again in a counting - book format, the desired items all turn out to be animals involved in unusual activities (e.g. two giraffes reading with glasses).

Available through:  Amazon    Palo Alto Library

¿Quien nacerá aquí?
Flor Ada
ISBN-10: 1581051972
Out of Print
Rhyming riddles ask which animal will hatch from different eggs. The eggs are presented in their natural habitats; both illustrations and text hint at the answers.

Available through:  Amazon

Summer Reading: After Kindergarten

The Summer Reading list for After Kindergarten (Incoming 1st Graders) is now available at the SIPAPA bookstore.

Here's the full list and where to get them - Amazon, Palo Alto & Mountain View libraries.

Harry el Perrito Sucio / Harry the Dirty Dog
Clay

ISBN-10: 0064434435

Harry es un perrito blanco con manchas negras al que todo le gusta . . . excepto bañarse. Así que un día antes del baño, Harry se escapa. Se pasa el día, jugando en la calle y pronto está tan sucio que se convierte en un perro negro con manchas blancas. Ahora Harry tiene un problema: ¡su propia familia no lo reconoce!

Get it at: Amazon    Palo Alto Library    Mountain View Library

Buenas Noches, luna (Goodnight Moon)
Brown & Hurd
ISBN-10:0590131591

Loyal to the original, this translation has retained the poetic and soothing tone that makes it a favorite read-aloud. It's as popular among Spanish readers as its original always has been among English readers.

Get it at: Amazon    Mountain View Library

Author Profile: Alma Flor Ada

Alma Flor Ada is a noted children´s author and translator.

Raised in a family of storytellers, Alma Flor Ada grew up listening to tales of all kinds, from folktales to stories about Cuban history to fantasies about other worlds. Her grandmother taught her to read before she was three by writing the names of flowers and plants on the ground with a stick. Yet Ada only began writing books when she became a teacher. Unsatisfied with the materials she was given, she began to write her own. A professor in one of her college classes saw what she was writing and helped her to get it published, and soon she was writing textbooks. One day, however, her four-year-old daughter told her that the textbooks she was writing were "ugly" and asked her to write books for her instead. "At that time," Ada says, "I didn't know what I know now. I didn't know that everyone is an author; that everyone has stories to tell. I was very shy and so I started by telling the stories my grandmother used to tell me." Now Alma Flor Ada has over 200 books to her name, many drawn from her own childhood or from the folktales her family told her.