A is for Airplane/A Es Para Avion [Multiple Languages]

Our Latin American-born daughter is 13 months old and we purchased this book for her as a way to facilitate dual alphabet acquisition. It is WONDERFUL! The colorful, fun drawings capture her attention and provide not only letter instruction but also help build basic vocabulary. We highly recommend this book for any family hoping to encourage the beginnings of bilingualism!

A is for Airplane/A es para Avion is a children's book that is intended to help kids learn the alphabet. This book includes upper and lower case depiction of each letter on each page, along with an illustration of something that starts with the letter and a caption that quickly expresses what is in the illustration. This book is intended to help kids learn the alphabet and also help them to associate specific letters with certain words. An example is the letter L, and its caption: L is for Lake. To help introduce kids to Spanish, each page offers the same illustration and a Spanish description, like L es para Lago. On the Spanish side, it includes a page for the Spanish letter N with a tilde symbol, but there is no page for Spanish letters CH and LL. I'm not sure why the author did this, but I assume these two letters were left out to avoid confusing youngsters. The illustrations in this book are pretty good and they fulfill their mission well: Getting kids to associate specific letters with specific objects. It is nice that this book mixes up the words with a few different parts of speech. The majority of the illustrations and associated words are nouns, like mommy and telephone. But there are some other parts of speech like karate and red. It would have been nice to have even more, but at least there are a few other types of words. This is an improvement compared to most books that teach kids the alphabet. They typically offer nothing but nouns. I like the artistic illustrations in A is for Airplane/A es para Avion. They are very simple, but still effective. The illustrations feature colors like blue, red, yellow, orange, green, purple and brown. The colors are scattered throughout the illustrations- including in ways that are not realistic, but make them appealing to a child's eyes. For example, the page L is for Lake includes a lake with blue water and some green grass, but the terrain in the background is purple. The purple isn't realistic, but kids will enjoy it nonetheless. Overall, A is for Airplane/A es para Avion is a good, bilingual way to teach kids the alphabet. It is a simple book, but still quite effective at helping kids learn the English alphabet and the Spanish equivalent to each letter along with a Spanish caption to describe the objects at hand. It makes a good choice for introducing toddlers to the alphabet and serves as an effective aid to learning this basic skill.

The best thing about this book are the illustrations; they are very bright, colorful and appealing to young eyes. The word choices are clever and useful. This is a great way to get your child interested in both the alphabet and a foreign language!

Just purchased the book. Great teaching tool to introduce children to different languages. Bright colorful pictures to go along with the text. They certainly hold the interest of the children. Super idea for bilingual learning. Creative words were used. Bought a few to give as baby gifts.