Posted on by TracyC

Carmen Learns English

Carmen Learns English by Judy Cox, illustrated by Angela Dominguez, 2010.

Carmen is in kindergarten and has been learning English at school. Her little sister, Lupita, will start school next year, and Carmen thinks about how she wants Lupita to learn English before she starts school. The family is from Mexico, and the girls speak Spanish at home.

School hasn’t been easy for Carmen because the other kids don’t speak Spanish. They all speak English, and they speak fast, which makes it difficult for Carmen to follow their conversations. It helps that her teacher knows some Spanish. Her teacher’s Spanish isn’t very good, but in a way, Carmen finds that comforting because her teacher will understand if her English isn’t very good, either. People who are learning another language understand what it’s like when someone else is learning, too.

Carmen gradually learns new English words at school. When she gets home, she draws pictures of what she’s learned and teaches her mother and little sister the English words. At first, Carmen is too shy to say the words out loud at school because she isn’t confident about how she’s saying them, but she practices at home.

Sometimes, kids at school give Carmen a hard time. Some kids think that she talks funny. When she counts in Spanish instead of English, they think that she’s saying the numbers wrong. Her teacher helps by teaching all the class to count in both Spanish and English, so all the students will learn both languages. Carmen helps to teach the other students words in Spanish, and when she gets home, she teaches Lupita the English words that she has learned.

Because Carmen has been helping Lupita to learn English, Lupita will have an easier time at school than Carmen had when she started. Carmen realizes that she really likes teaching, and she thinks that she might like to be a teacher herself someday.

My Reaction

I thought this was a good story about a child starting school while having to learn a new language at the same time. My mother used to teach English language learners, and she liked the story, too. She said it reminded her of some of the students she used to teach.

I thought that the teacher’s approach, having Carmen teach the other kids some Spanish while she was learning English was a good idea. Some of the other students find Carmen a little strange and confusing at first because they don’t understand the way she speaks, but when they start trading words in different languages, they all start to understand each other better. The other students begin to understand the concept that people can speak in different languages and that there can be different words that mean the same thing, depending on the language they’re speaking. I think it also helps them start to identify with Carmen because, like her, they are also starting to learn an unfamiliar language. As I said, people who are learning a new language or who have studied another language before can understand the difficulties of now always knowing all the words they want to say or exactly who to say them and can sympathize with other people who are also learning new languages.

I also liked it that Carmen realizes that, if she helps her sister to learn some English before she starts school, her sister will have an easier time. She has compassion for her sister because of her own experiences and wants to make things easier for Lupita. By helping both her sister and her fellow students, she also learns that she likes sharing what she knows with other people. She discovers that she likes teaching and might want to be a teacher herself someday.

I read this book as an adult because it’s a relatively new book that didn’t exist when I was a kid, but it reminds me of another book that I did read as a kid, I Hate English, which is about a girl from China learning English. The Chinese girl has some similar troubles learning English and feeling uneasy around people who don’t understand her, although she also struggled with the fear that she would lose her native language or cultural/personal identity by learning a new one. Carmen doesn’t mention that in this story, but some of my mother’s old Spanish-speaking students had that worry when they were learning English, too. Perhaps part of the reason why Carmen doesn’t feel like that is because her teacher encourages her to teach the other students some Spanish, giving her the opportunity to keep speaking it from time to time and share the language with others. In a way, this story was closer to my experiences when I was younger because Carmen is like the kids my mother used to teach and because Spanish is what I studied in school myself.

Posted on by TracyC

Tortillas Para Mama

Tortillas Para Mama selected and translated by Margot C. Griego, Betsy L. Bucks, Sharon S. Gilbert, and Laurel H. Kimball, illustrated by Barbara Cooney, 1981.

This is a collection of Spanish lullabies and nursery rhymes in the Americas.  The introduction to the book explains how these traditional rhymes have been passed down through the generations of families.  They are not specific to any one country, more generally known where there are Spanish speakers. The rhymes are in both in English and Spanish.

Like children’s rhymes everywhere, they are about small, everyday things, like family, animals, cooking, and other things people do every day, like helping little kids to get dressed.

There are rhymes and songs that involve counting on fingers or making hand motions.

My favorite is the lullaby Los Pollitos (The Chicks), which I first heard when I was little through Kidsongs. I always liked that song.

The illustrations, paintings by Barbara Cooney, are beautiful.  Some people may recognize the art style from her other works like Miss Rumphius and Roxaboxen.

Posted on by TracyC

The Gullywasher

The Gullywasher written and illustrated by Joyce Rossi, 1995.

This is a tall-tale story, told by a grandfather to his young granddaughter about how he came to be an old man.  The grandfather was a vaquero (Spanish for cowboy, the origin of the work “buckaroo”) in his younger days.  The book is written in both English and Spanish.

When the story begins, Leticia and her grandfather are watching a passing storm.  The grandfather calls it a “gullywasher” and says that they should wait before going on a walk.

Leticia asks her grandfather to tell her about when he used to be a vaquero.  After some coaxing, he begins to tell her about a big gullywasher that he was caught in when he was younger.

By the time the storm was over, the water had wrinkled his skin.  Then, when he was napping under a palo verde tree, a hummingbird took some of the hairs on his head to make a nest.  It took all of the dark ones, leaving only the white ones.

After that, he came to a village, where he looked for food.  An old woman gave him some corn kernels, but he made the mistake of eating some chili peppers immediately afterward, so the corn popped in his stomach, giving him the pot belly he has today.  Also, his horse was so tired that he had to carry the horse all the way home on his back, making him bent over.  That is how he got to be the old man that he is.

When the tall tale is over, Leticia asks her grandfather if it makes him sad to be bent over.  Her grandfather tells her that it doesn’t because he’s closer to her this way.

The note from the author in the beginning explains a little about the tall tales that cowboys liked to tell.  One of the keys to telling a story like this is to try to keep a straight face during the telling.  Keeping a straight face can make the outrageous story seem more convincing, but it can also make it seem funnier.  There is also a glossary in the back of the book with the definitions of some of the key Spanish words.  It also reminds readers that Leticia’s name is pronounced differently by Spanish speakers than English speakers (“leh-TEE-seeya”).