La nube

Una nubecita blanca y redonda como un sueño flotaba sobre el mar...

So begins La nube by Joel Franz Rosell, which is currently my sons' favorite book, hands down. It is the simple tale of a white cloud that begins to turn gray and become heavy with rain. As the wind blows her over the beach, sunbathers and splashing children alike flee, searching for a place where the sun still shines. The cloud sighs and moves on to the city, where her presence sends people scrambling for their umbrellas and raincoats. And so on--wherever she goes, nobody is happy to see her and she keeps getting bigger, grayer, and sadder. Until, that is, she has turned into una colosal nubezota and she floats over drought-stricken plains. There, farmers and cattlemen run towards her with open arms, and she is so overcome that she starts to cry huge raindrops that make the river run once again.

See? Simple. There are so many things to love about this book, though. The main reason it is so much fun is because it uses pictograms--many of the words, such as nube, sol, and niños have been replaced by images throughout the book. In the back of the book is a Pequeño diccionario de imágenes, where you can look up the pictures and find the words that go along with them. This is one of the most interactive books we own. The early reader in my household loves reading the text and looking up the words in the back of the book. My other son just loves it when I take care of reading the text and have him "read" the pictures to me when I point to them. The illustrations are wonderful, vivid and colorful.

As a translator, I am constantly faced with different words that mean the same thing and I like to have different options up my sleeve. I must say I love the fact that some of the entries in the glossary provide several options. For example, if you look up the picture of the bus, you get ómnibus, autobús and colectivo. The entry for "children" includes a whopping eight different words: chicos, niños, botijas, chavos, cabros, changos, gurises and chiquillos. A few of those I'd never even heard of. We usually go with the option that sounds the most natural to us, but occasionally my kids will crack themselves up by mixing it up a little, and I find it wonderful that they're learning different ways to say things, words I wouldn't normally use.

The book is from a series called Cuentos de colores. We own two of the other books in the series and they're just as delightful. I fell in love with them and bought them a couple of years ago, but they didn't become favorites around here until my sons turned three.

As for the cloud? Having cried/rained herself out, she becomes small and white again and the wind blows her back out to sea.

Y una nubecita blanca y redonda como un sueño flota de nuevo sobre el mar...