BookBox creates animated books with Same Language Subtitling (SLS) to support reading and literacy development around the world. Language learners can listen to stories as they read Spanish subtitles. With stories from BookBox, kids build reading and listening skills.
Videos are a great way for children to learn Spanish. Check out all our Spanish videos for kids.
The stories on the BookBox website are free. The not-for-profit enterprise PlanetRead is the parent organization of BookBox. Through PlanetRead, BookBox gifts one hour of reading to a beginning reader for every story watched.
BookBox in Spanish: What You Need to Know
- BookBox has 18 animated stories in Spanish to watch free online on their website or on the BookBox channel on YouTube.
- Most of these stories have excellent native speaker narration at a pace that allows children to take in the illustrations and the text.
- Two of the stories in Spanish, La princesa campesina and El viento y el sol, are not narrated by a native speaker.
- The animated images are designed to support the narration.
- Text-sound association is an excellent way for beginning readers to develop literacy skills.
- The difficulty of the stories varies, but if you are looking for a place to begin, El pequeño pianista is one of the simpler stories for Spanish language learners.
- You can download a free audio mp3 of all the stories.
- You can download a free PDF of the text of 13 stories.
- 14 of the Spanish stories have games to play online or download. They are based on the illustrations. There is no audio or text, but they provide an opportunity to talk about the characters and the storyline.
- 14 of the stories have coloring pages to download and print. These are based on the illustrations. Talking about the pictures is a good way to give children repeated exposure to language from the story.
- All of the game and stories are listed together. For now, the 14 stories available in Spanish that have games and coloring pages are:
Santa’s Christmas / La navidad de Santa
Elephant Goes to the City / Un elefante va a la ciudad
The First Well / El primer pozo
The Whispering Palms / Las palmeras susurrantes
The Four Friends / Los cuatro amigos
Zippy the Zebra / Zippi
The Boo in the Shoe / El kato en el zapato
Tucket the Bucket / Hugo el cubo
The Elves and the Shoemaker / Los elfos y el zapatero
Turtle’s Flute / Tortuga y su flauta
The Wind and the Sun / El viento y el sol
The Princess Farmer / La princesa campesina
The Flying Elephant / El elefante volador
Prince Amir / Alegría
