Tristán Lobo, by Mariana Llanos, is a captivating story with a very clever twist. For native speakers or children learning Spanish, this book is an excellent transition from picture books to chapter books. Tristán Lobo is available on Amazon and on the author’s website.
Tristan was raised by wolves. He realizes he is different and decides to learn about people. The story follows his adventures as he makes the decision and travels to make contact with humans. It has a wonderful surprise ending!
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Tristán Lobo is an excellent book for Spanish language learners because:
- It has significantly more text than a typical picture book.
- The story includes concepts and settings with many familiar words for Spanish learners. For example, Tristán compares wolves and humans – how they look, what they eat, and what they can do. Later, he goes to a farm and interacts with the animals.
- The story has large amounts of dialog. Dialog is easier to understand than description and third-person narration.
- Spanish learners will understand the story, but will also be exposed to new vocabulary in context.
- Tristán Lobo is suspenseful! Children want to understand what they are reading.
- This book is made to read again and again. It is a very different story once children know the ending. It becomes even more intriguing and interesting as the text takes on new meaning. Kids love Tristán Lobo!
It is difficult to find Spanish books with this kind of appeal and at this level. I appreciate that Tristán Lobo is a wonderful story with lots of language, giving kids who have a base in the language exposure to significant amounts of text.
Mariana Llanos is an award-winning author of children’s books. She is originally from Peru, and many of her books are available in both Spanish and English. Mariana Llanos also has a wonderful program of school visits by Skype or Google+. Learn more about this opportunity on the author’s website.
You can follow Mariana Llanos on Facebook and Twitter. She also shares Spanish learning resources on the Facebook page Bilingual Mama.
Katie C
Sep 2, 2015
Hello! I really appreciate this site and recommendations so much!
Question: Does this book cover past, present and future tense, or just present tense?
Jenny
Sep 2, 2015
Hi,
I’m glad you like Spanish Playground! Tristán Lobo is narrated in the past tenses, so the majority of the verbs are in the imperfect or preterite. A lot of the dialog is in the present, though.
Katie C
Sep 2, 2015
Thanks so much for getting back to me! I’m a Spanish learnin’ mama trying to teach Spanish learning kiddos.