Bebe Goes Shopping

Title: Bebe Goes Shopping
Genre: Multicultural
Author: Susan Middleton Elya
Major Awards: None
Age Group: Preschool-Kindergarten

This is a story about a little baby taking a trip to the supermercado- the grocery store, with his mother. On each page, there are words in Spanish and in English, describing things they encounter while shopping. The little baby wants to help his mother grocery shop, but instead he wrecks havoc and causes stress for his mother. He gets annoyed that he cannot help, so he starts kicking, knocking over displays of food, throwing things from the cart onto the floor, and tries to escape from the grocery cart. His mother becomes infuriated, but then sees a display for animal crackers. She gives them to the baby, and this distracts him for the rest of the shopping time. In the end, the baby starts to act better and even gets a balloon as he leaves.

I would like this book in my classroom because it is a great introduction to the Spanish language for young children. With each sentence, there is one word in Spanish, with the rest of the sentence being in English. This is a great way for young children to start learning Spanish, and I really enjoyed how the author wrote the book.

I think that this book is most appropriate for Preschool through Kindergarten. The main character is a baby, so I can see students on the older end thinking it was a "baby" book, but once they read it, I think they would enjoy it! There are not very many words on each page, so early readers could read this on their own. They might need help with pronouncing the Spanish words though, so I think this would be best read as a read aloud.

In my classroom, I could write all the Spanish words from the story on chart paper, and we could try to figure out their meaning, based on how they sound. I could also get some play food out, and we could learn the names of each one in Spanish. It would also be fun to have each student draw a picture of their favorite food, and tell the class why they like this food so much.

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