Opal Dunn

El Gato Leo Comes to play! was an interesting book. I think the idea of incorporating both Spanish and English words into a children’s book is a great idea. However, I think the way this author accomplished it is a little strange. The story is about a cat named Leo who only speaks Spanish. The story has flaps with the Spanish word on top and the English word below it. I think that is a neat way to show the reader what each word means. One thing I did not like about this book was that it might be difficult for the reader to correctly pronounce the Spanish words. There is a pronunciation guide in the back, but for a new reader they might struggle since Spanish words follow different rules than English words do. For example, Leo says, “Vale” which means okay. The “v” in Spanish is pronounced like “b”. I think someone might have a difficult time understanding that. I took Spanish for 13 years, so I was able to determine how to say the phrases. A reader who is trying to learn Spanish might be able to remember how it is spelt and what it means, but they might not get the pronunciation correct which could inhibit their learning of Spanish words and phrases. One thing I do like is there is a game at the end of the book. One of the pages in the index gives directions for a fun game using some of the Spanish words that the reader would have learned from the story. I think this would help the reader become more familiar with these words since they would be using them and not only reading it one time. The illustrations are kind of strange. They remind me of a cartoon book pictures. I personally do not like them because the cat, Leo, is rather large and the mouse that is talking to him is very small. This makes sense because mice are small, but I found it strange that a cat and mouse were playing and talking together. I also noticed the colors were different. For axample, the cat and mouse were blue while the grass was yellow. The main idea of this story is to help readers become accustomed to another language as well as learn some Spanish words. It is important for people to realize there are more languages in the world than just English—some of those alphabetic and some not. I think this book would definitely help readers gain some knowledge about Spanish and some Spanish words.… (mehr)

The index of first lines is not very useful unless one is already familiar with the poems. The table of contents of the titles of each poem does not give a clear indication of what the poem will be about. When I think of children's books, I think colors and illustrations. There is an over-abundance of illustrations. Some are helpful, some are not. Some pages are filled to the brim with illustrations that it is distracting and overwhelming.

Opal Dunn is a specialist in early and second language development. Math is a language that everyone needs to learn. The poetry and rhymes she used to help young readers with counting numbers are a good idea. I used similar techniques as an ESL teacher. Rhymes like "In the Kitchen" uses simple, similar syntax and redundancy to make a long rhyme more easier to remember. However, the rhymes do not sound appealing to me. I find them to be very boring.… (mehr)