Reading about Spain and Hispanic Culture

Sometimes I have a young class who need calming at the beginning of a lesson and at other times I need to fill a little bit of time at the end of a lesson when the children have finished all their work.

I read them a book in English about Spain or a Spanish-speaking country which also has a cultural theme.  Here is my selection of books:

Abuela's Weave  tells the touching story of Esperanza and her grandmother going to sell their traditional weaving at a market in town.  The story is from Guatemala and I read this to the children as part of our Guatemala project.

This is the tale of how chocolate was given to the Mayan people by the Jaguar god.  It has a bookmark in as this is the story I am reading with Year 2 at the moment!   

The moon falls from the sky and breaks into pieces.  The story tells how she was put back together again.

Lola's papi teaches her to dance flamenco.  There is a CD included with the book as well with music.

Ferdinand the Bull was the subject of one of the early Disney cartoons.  We read the book first and then watched the cartoon to see how they were different.

This is a great book for explaining why there are so many Spanish-speakers who don't live in Spain.

I bought this book because it reminded me of Nathalie Paris and her Bibliobook!  This is the true story of a librarian who took books to children in very rural areas of Colombia with the aid of his donkeys.

This story tells the tale of Gaudí walking around Barcelona and talking about his works.

The fox (Zorro) wants to eat the guinea pig (Quwi) but is continually tricked by him.  Year 2 really liked this one.

Another story from Mayan mythology, which tells how the first Mayan people were made of corn

I like to read this story on European Day of Languages.  Carmelita and her dog Manny walk down their multi-cultural street, calling out "Hello" and "Woof" in lots of different languages as they go.

And finally, The Legend of the Poinsettia tells how the poinsettia plant ("Flor de Navidad") came to be closely associated with Christmas in Mexico.

Thank you to members of the Languages in Primary Schools Facebook Group, who recommended a lot of these.  Do you know any others?