Colors/Colores: My Very First Bilingual Book

by Eric Carle

Learn English and Spanish words with Eric Carle! Parents are increasingly aware of the benefits of teaching children multiple languages, and the earlier the better! This ingeniously simple board book uses Eric Carle?s vibrant artwork to teach simple words?slide the panel to reveal the name of each color in English or in Spanish. It combines the effectiveness of flashcards with the interactivity of a novelty book!

Genres: Childrens, Spanish Literature

12 pages, Board book

First published May 1, 2008

About the author

Eric Carle was an American author, designer and illustrator of children's books. His picture book The Very Hungry Caterpillar, first published in 1969, has been translated into more than 66 languages and sold more than 50 million copies. Carle's career as an illustrator and children's book author accelerated after he collaborated on Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?. Carle illustrated more than 70 books, most of which he also wrote, and more than 145 million copies of his books have been sold around the world.
In 2003, the American Library Association awarded Carle the biennial Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal (now called the Children's Literature Legacy Award), a prize for writers or illustrators of children's books published in the U.S. who have made lasting contributions to the field. Carle was also a U.S. nominee for the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2010.

Reviews

[Jon Nakapalau]

Great first Spanish/English book about colors. So behind in my Spanish reading - really have to get serious about getting to the next level of fluency. So hard to feel like I am making any progress - really wish I had been more diligent when I took Spanish when I was younger. This book gives me a little hope - got to keep on keeping on!

[Jasmine from How Useful It Is]

Read for my toddler at the library.

[Diana Salazar]

In Spanish, most native speakers say morado NOT púrpura for standard purple.

Rojo/anaranjado/amarillo/verde/azul/morado

Those are the elementary colors in Spanish. It would be the equivalent of saying mauve instead of purple in English.

Whoever did the translations for this was soulless (a computer) or uninformed.

[Sarah Herb]

I really liked this book. It brought me back to my high school days in Spanish class and it was a lot of fun to read. It a great book for ELL students because they can see how the English and Spanish sentences compare and directly translate.

[Jennifer H.]

I was happily surprised there are full English and Spanish sentences to accompany each word. Each page is beautifully crafted. This is a wonderful little book!

[Theo]

It’s about English and Spanish

[Canette Arille]

Children can learn two languages - English and Spanish. They reading words in these two languages. Very educational book. I like it

[Laura Prichard]

Colors/Colores: My Very First Bilingual Book (in English and Spanish) by Eric Carle, New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 2008. $8.99 ISBN 978-0-448-44883-1

This charming book is a reprint and translation of Carle’s My Very First Book of Colors (2005) designed for pre-school and kindergarten students. Carle has become well-known for his vivid tissue-paper collages and innovations in book design, and his My Very First Book of… series teaches colors, shapes, animal sounds, animal homes, and other elements of the natural world. This new edition has a literal Spanish translation of the original text and windows that the reader can slide to reveal either an English or Spanish color word. The subject of each pair of pages is described in two sentences on the left side, and the sliding window displays an accompanying illustration with the color word in both languages (only one appears at a time).

The book can be a great way for parents and teachers to help children master both content and language. Sentences are chosen carefully to bring out grammatical contrasts between the two languages (word order, agreement of adjectives and nouns in Spanish, and the variety of articles in Spanish). Every pair of pages includes words that are cognates, to help students transfer knowledge from one language to the other. The book also provides an opportunity for discussion to extend the lesson on colors by asking students (in English and Spanish) to list and describe other colored objects and animals.

Although most states no longer support long-term bilingual programs, most have at least one to two years of Sheltered English Immersion, and this book would be helpful for teachers of pre-K and Kindergarten classes in which Spanish-speaking students are present. 80% of SEI students in the US are Spanish-speakers, so original, vibrant presentations of basic vocabulary like this book are welcome additions to school libraries.

[Karen]

Nice bilingual color book.

[Sarah]

My kids LOVE Eric Carle board books, especially those with the slides. The only reason I knocked this down to three stars instead of five is because the English and Spanish sentences for the color blue (which are on the cover) are located on the BACK of the book, making reading and translating just a slight pain, having to switch between the cover and the back.