Reading To Improve: Spanish Chapter Books
Welcome to my “Reading To Improve” series, where I share which Spanish books I’m reading aloud with my daughter and reviewing them. This is our first leap into chapter books and I’m excited to share our experiences with you!
In this post I go through some of the ways that I’ve boosted my daughter’s Spanish vocabulary, what kind of Spanish chapter books to buy and which ones are our top picks! All of these chapter books in Spanish are perfect for reading aloud. If you’re looking for Spanish books that are easy to read, I recommend starting out with Spanish graphic novels.
Table of Contents
Building Our Spanish Vocabulary With Nonfiction Books
I’ve been writing a lot recently about increasing Spanish language vocabulary. My daughter and I have been learning Spanish together for four years now and we’re getting to a strong conversational level.
We learn new vocabulary as needed by using the dictionary to look up words or concepts that we want to know the word for, but I’d realized that I needed to start actively boosting our level of Spanish vocabulary.
Part of that realization has come from the fact that my daughter is getting to be school aged and I’ve realized that there are so many academic words that we don’t know well.
It’s important to me that her Spanish is just as strong as her English and I need to be able to provide her with a high level of academic vocabulary as well as conversational language.
One of the ways that I’ve worked on increasing her academic Spanish vocabulary has been through the use of nonfiction books. Nonfiction books are great because they add tier 3 leveled vocabulary words to our language, like scientific words or content-specific words (decomposition, mummification, etc).
While it’s been harder to find nonfiction books in Spanish, my daughter has a growing collection and we’ve been working through them and learning some good terminology.
Read here for some good Spanish nonfiction book series:
Nonfiction Books In Spanish For Kids
Why We Started Chapter Books
Another way that I’ve increased her Spanish vocabulary is through chapter books. While picture books often include a wider range of vocabulary (reading aloud helps your Spanish) than daily conversation, chapter books include a much stronger word variety, more complex sentence structures and more literary devices.
My daughter and I have enjoyed working through several chapter books and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how much we’ve learned from working with a higher level of Spanish language than we were used to.
For the first round of chapter books, I purposely picked books that I enjoyed in English and bought the translated Spanish editions for. As I am a non-native Spanish speaker, I was worried that the level of vocabulary might be too high for me and that I would lose the plot of the story if it were a completely new book to me.
I’ll be adding to this series as we read another chunk of books so that you can see our progression and what we recommend as good Spanish read alouds for your family!
A note on translations and Latin American Spanish vs. Spain Spanish
Several people have asked me what type of Spanish I try and use with my daughter, Latin American Spanish or Spanish from Spain.
I am not Hispanic and don’t have a tie to any particular Spanish speaking country. My main concern is making sure that my daughter and I are able to speak high level and quality Spanish.
Since we live in the United States, most videos/songs that are available via services like Netflix and Amazon Music are automatically provided with the Latin American Spanish translation. Therefore, most of our music and shows are in Latin American Spanish. In our area of the United States, all DVDs that we get and use with Spanish audio always come with the Latin American Spanish audio.
However, most of the translated nonfiction and chapter books that I have found for my daughter are Spanish editions from Spain. I’m not worried about the fact that we mix Spanish from different countries and I don’t feel like we need to limit our Spanish exposure to one type of translation over the other.
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The First Chapter Books That We Read In Spanish
La Telarana de Carlota (Charlotte’s Web)
Author: E.B White
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-075740-3
What we liked about it: “Charlotte’s Web” is a children’s classic and was the first chapter book that my daughter and I read together. Each night we’d read one chapter and talk about what happened.
One of the reasons that this book is a great introduction to chapter books is because each chapter is episodic and relatively contained. The chapters relate the adventures of Fern, Wilbur, Charlotte and the animals on Zuckerman’s farm over the course of a few months. My daughter loved that each chapter was an adventure and it was enough action to carry her through the book without losing pace.
The characters are another reason why this book is a great start to reading chapter books. While the characters are relatively simple, there is some character growth and a variety of predictable character types. My daughter would love when we’d see Templeton the rat saying, “Oh Templeton! Now what’s he gonna do?” His predictable pattern of mischief made him one of her favorite characters.
If you’re looking for a good chapter book to start at, “Charlote’s Web” is a nice place. The Spanish isn’t so high-level that an intermediate reader wouldn’t be able to keep up with it, there is plenty of dialog to move the story, and the descriptions of the setting do a nice job of adding new vocabulary.
Charlie y la Fabrica de Chocolate (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)
Author: Roald Dahl
ISBN-13: 978-1-59820-059-1
What we liked about it: Roald Dahl is famous for his many wonderfully written children’s books and this was the first one that I wanted to introduce my daughter to. As with “Charlotte’s Web”, the characters are relatively simple and don’t go through major changes, making it predictable for a child to follow along with. Each chapter is short, sometimes only 2-3 pages long, which makes it nice for a quick before bed read if you’re going chapter by chapter.
Roald Dahl is known for adding in dark undertones in his children’s books, though I consider “Charlie” to be one of his lighter books. The other four winning children who go with Charlie on the adventure through the chocolate factory, all represent a facet of society that Dahl wishes to make commentary on, and it’s fun to see how their flaws are matched perfectly with the candy creations of Mr. Wonka.
This chapter book is a step up from “Charlotte’s Web” in difficulty for a few reasons. The famous Oompa Loompas of the factory occasionally break into song (long songs that may go on for a few pages…). My daughter had a hard time following the songs since the wording was a little strange in order to make them rhyme or sound good, they were often making social commentary, alluding to things like bad parenting or how people watch too much TV, and they often required a bit of inferencing to really understand. The narrative also includes more literacy devices like ‘play on words’ that may be harder for a new Spanish learner or a child to understand.
The level of Spanish is also higher than that of “Charlotte’s Web” and included less common vocabulary. While many people learning Spanish have a good idea of basic farm vocabulary to help them get through “Charlotte’s Web”, it’s less common to have words for “Everlasting Gobstoppers” and other explanations of magical candies.
This is a good book to get into with a child who has a strong Spanish foundation and has already listened to a chapter book or two.
El Ratoncito de la Moto (The Mouse and the Motorcycle)
Author: Beverly Cleary
ISBN-13: 978-0060000578
What we liked about it: This was the easiest of the chapter books that we read and it was a fun adventure story! Beverly Cleary has written extensively for children and her chapter books are often easy, light, beginning books for beginning chapter book readers.
Keith is a boy who is staying at a hotel on vacation and befriends a mouse named Ralph who lives there. They two share a love of motorcycles and their adventures are easy to follow and filled with lots of dialog, which moves the story along nicely, especially for a child who’s new to chapter books.
I would say that the level of Spanish in this book was the easiest of all of the books that we read. There were a few “hotel” related words that my daughter was unfamiliar with, but other than that, we understood quite easily what was going on. There were few literary devices, and not much to be inferred, making the story easy to follow. This book is written at a 2nd/3rd grade level, and is meant for children who are just starting to read chapter books more independently.
This is a good chapter book to start at, especially if you’re not a fluent Spanish reader yourself. The language and story are easy to follow and the adventure story will keep a young child interested without needing much explanation about the plot and characters.
Matilda (Matilda)
Author: Roald Dahl
ISBN-13: 978-1-947783-36-2
What we liked about it: I mentioned earlier that Roald Dahl is known for adding dark layers to his books. “Matilda”, while full of magic and adventure, definitely has a darker and more mature feel than “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”. From the condescending attitude of Matilda’s parents to the terrifying Trunchbull, there are undertones of child neglect and abuse in this story.
Despite the dark layers in this book, it was by far my daughter’s favorite of the four that we read and also probably the hardest.
While friendly characters are hard to come by in this story, Matilda and Miss. Honey are so lovable that they quickly become your favorites in no time at all. Unlike some of the other chapter books that we read, several of the characters in this book go through changes and have more complex interactions than the characters in the previous books. Matilda develops powers in her eyes part way through the book and Miss. Honey’s troubled past is revealed to us and connected to the present day interactions with the Trunchbull.
The Spanish in this book was definitely the highest level of the four books that we read and there were several times that we had to look up words in the dictionary to help us better understand what was happening. Despite that, this book is a highly engaging read and a real classic of children’s literature!
This is a good book to read with a child who has a strong Spanish foundation, has already listened to a few chapter books and doesn’t get easily scared from mild drama and ‘bad guys’.
Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone)
Author: JK Rowling
ISBN-13: 978-8498387094
What we liked about it: We loved so much about this book that I actually wrote a whole post dedicated to it! This book is a childhood favorite of mine and I was so excited to read the new illustrated version and to share the experience with my daughter. Check out my full review here!
If you’re looking for more of my “Reading To Improve Series”, check out this next installment:
Chapter books have been a great step forward in our Spanish learning and I’ll be adding another post in the series to review the next set of books that we read. If you have any suggestions or recommendations, let me know in the comments!
Happy Learning!
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