January's Giveaway!

Just a little housekeeping before announcing this month’s giveaway. In case you haven’t noticed, I have added a few new links in the sidebar, including one to the current Pura Belpré Medal Winners. If you’d like to see all of the past winners, just click on it and then select "Past Belpré Winners."

The LBBC is continuing to grow in readership, but we’d like your help anyway in spreading the word about us. One way that you might do so is by becoming a fan on our Facebook page. Simply click on the link in our sidebar. Give us a good review while you’re at it?

Another way is to just tell all your familia y amigos to check us out. Tell them about our monthly giveaways, and all the super book reviews and author interviews we do.

Do you have a blog? Link back to us! We appreciate the support.

On the topic of Latino literature (both for children and adults), Adriana Dominguez, former Executive Editor of HarperCollins Children’s Books, has written an interesting post on her new blog, Voces. In it, she discusses the great year that Latino literature enjoyed in 2008 while reminding us of all the work that still lies before us. I strongly encourage you to check it out here.

And now, on to the giveaway!

So once again, I’m going to giveaway a book to two lucky readers. We need to kick off the New Year on a good note, no?

The first book is a simple, light-hearted, bilingual book titled, Marco Flamingo/Marco Flamenco by Sheila Jarkins. It is mostly a picture book with a very cute little story line about a flamingo who wonders what snow is after listening to the stories of all his "snowbird" friends. He keeps asking, and asking, but finally decides to fly north for the winter to experience it himself. The illustrations are funny and will make your niños giggle. The book is written in English with full text in Spanish.

The second book is Marta y la bicicleta by Germano Zullo. It is published by Kane/Miller, who, as you may remember from an earlier post, carefully selects literature from around the world and translates it into English or, as in this case, Spanish. The text in Marta is definitely more advanced, not necessarily for beginners, but I do like these because even if my children don’t understand it all, the stories help to develop my children’s ear for the language (pronunciation, emphasis, etc.)

Originally from Switzerland, Marta is about an unusual cow that doesn’t fit in with the other cows in her herd. For starters, she is anaranjada, instead of black and white like the others. And while all the other cows are intrigued with trains, Marta finds the big machines too noisy. Then one day, a bicycle race happens to go through town…

So to win one of these books, just leave us a comment below. You have until midnight on Thursday. I’ll announce the winner sometime on Friday the 16th. In fact, you can increase your chances of winning, by writing about or linking to the LBBC on your blog and letting us know in the comments section. I’ll check it out, and if indeed you have a link to us/post about us, I’ll enter your name TWICE into the official magic salsa bowl.

¡Buenas suerte a todos!