Juana and Lucas by Juana Medina
This is a charming early chapter book about a young girl named Juana growing up in her beloved Bogotá, Columbia. The text is very visually appealing, and sprinkled throughout with images, graphic features, and Spanish words -- particularly cognates.
Juana is just like any other schoolgirl -- she gets in trouble on the school bus for blowing bubblegum bubbles the size of her head, she dotes on her dog Lucas, adores her family, and struggles with certain subjects in school, namely English. Whyyyyyyy does she have to learn English, particularly when it is so hard and its words are hard to say and not nearly as logical as Spanish? But her family offers examples of why English will be good to learn - Juana's Tía Cris tells her she'll be able to sing all of the great songs that are in English (Juana grumbles that there are tons of great songs in Spanish); the brothers who run the corner market want her to be able to translate their store signs so that tourists can read them; and Abue, best of all, convinces her to learn English because he is taking the family to Florida to visit Spaceland! Juana's big-picture reward for learning English is great:
"And the number-one thing I've learned from coming here to Spaceland in Florida in the U.S. of A. is that I'd love to keep on traveling! Even if Astroman didn't seem to care much about my stories, other people did. Because I speak English so well, I've been able to have fun with a lot of new people and make a lot of new friends. And who wouldn't like for that to happen all around the world?
The number-two thing I've learned is that if I want to travel and make new friends, I will need to learn a gazillion more languages besides English and español! That's what Abue says. I don't know if there will be enough espacio between my pigtails for French and Chinese and Italian and Farsi and Portuguese and all of the other languages. Maybe it's time to go back to Columbia and ask Lucas what he thinks about that."
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