Thanksgiving is a holiday that I definitely grew up with, thanks to my American grandma who always made sure we watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV & ate plenty of apple pie. 

But because we celebrated in Mexico, I had only a cursory understanding of the actual Thanksgiving story. And it was definitely a very white-centric version, a one-sided one that wasn’t inclusive of indigenous voices and experiences. 

So needless to say, Thanksgiving is still something I’m learning about (I found this essay, a Native perspective on Thanksgiving, very enlightening). And of course, I want to do what I can to make sure my kids’ understanding of Thanksgiving is broader than mine was. 

Also I would like books that accomplish this in Spanish, please. Is that so much to ask? 🙂

Unsurprisingly, there aren’t really thaaat many Thanksgiving books in Spanish. Which makes sense, as it is a holiday only celebrated in an English-speaking country. But! Below I’ve listed some favorite books that celebrate gratitude, immigration, and even a couple of specifically Thanksgiving-themed ones in Spanish. 

And I’m also including some favorite Thanksgiving books in English! So my dear bilingual friends, I hope you can find a new title or two to read as a family before the pleasure of eating all of that delicious food. 

THANKSGIVING BOOKS IN SPANISH

¡Gracias, Omu! by Oge Mora

I love this book so much! Omu, an Igbo grandmother, has prepared a delicious soup for her dinner. So delicious, in fact, that the smell spreads throughout her neighborhood and invites many people to her door to sample it. I love her generosity in feeding those around her, and also love that they all share with her in return. This story is so perfect for a holiday about joy and celebration surrounding a feast. 

Gracias / Thanks by Pat Mora, illustrated by John Parra

This bilingual book is a list of a young boy’s simple pleasures and things he is thankful for. While it’s not a book specific to Thanksgiving, the author does encourage young readers to make their own list of things they’re grateful for. (Some of the things the boy is thankful for reminded me of my hija #3 (2), who told us she was grateful for “cheese sticks” as her contribution to our Thankful Turkey this year, haha.)

Soñadores by Yuyi Morales

Ok, stick with me here– technically this book is not about Thanksgiving, but it IS about immigration, and about the beautiful gifts immigrants bring. And what is Thanksgiving if not a story about U.S. immigration? I love this beautiful book so much and will take any excuse to read it, any time of year. 

Un día una señora se tragó un pavo by Lucille Colandro, illustrated by Jared Lee

I think this book may be out of print, because the only working link I could find to purchase it is from a bookstore in Guayaquil, Ecuador. But if you do happen to come across this title, it’s a silly, Thanksgiving-themed twist on I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. It’s an easy book that is great for discussing sequencing!

THANKSGIVING BOOKS IN ENGLISH

Balloons over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy’s Parade by Melissa Sweet

I bought this book just this year, and it’s for sure one of my all-time favorites from this list (see: years and years of watching the Macy’s parade with Grandma on Thanksgiving morning). Balloons over Broadway tells the true story of the creator behind the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The illustrations are sweet and phenomenally well-done, and even though it’s a children’s book you can tell it’s extremely well researched. LOVE. 

Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story by Kevin Noble Maillard, illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal

You already know I will read and love anything Juana Martinez-Neal creates! This is such a sweet story of a modern Native American family, and what fry bread means to them and their family history. I love that it brings in food and family & shows a variety of indigenous tribes. 

Over the River and Through the Wood by L. Maria Child, illustrated by Matt Tavares

We moved to Arizona (from Utah) in the middle of winter 11 years ago specifically to escape the snow. Reading this book is the ONLY time I am even slightly tempted to live somewhere with snow, which I think is a real testament to how gorgeous it is! This picture book is a beautiful winter-y book to display all season long. 

We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga by Traci Sorrell, illustrated by Frane Lessac

This gorgeous book focuses on the word “otsaliheliga,” which is a Cherokee word that means gratitude. The story focuses not just on one celebration of gratitude, but a full year of gratitude and celebrations. It’s a perfect Thanksgiving read! 

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I hope you have a beautiful Thanksgiving this year! It’s truly one of my very favorite holidays, porque nunca está por demás to take a minute or two to consider all of the beauty around us.

P.S. Because IMO Christmas starts at midnight the night of Thanksgiving 🙂 a Spanish Christmas book roundup to get you started!

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I’ve known since before I was a mom that reading aloud to my kids was very important to me. I think I’ve done a good job so far! While my parents also read a lot to us as babies and young kids, I don’t think we read aloud together beyond picture books. Once my brothers and I learned to read, they turned us loose and made sure we had plenty of books TO read, but not necessarily with them.  

Maybe because of this, I felt a little lost when it came to finding chapter books to read aloud with my growing daughters. The chapter books I remember are the ones I read to myself, and they were basically all in English. 

Thank goodness for the internet! So grateful for the people working hard to make sure our older kids here in the U.S. have access to great books en español. I’ve gathered all of the Spanish chapter books for preschoolers we’ve read together, arranged from simplest to most advanced. We alternate with English books! 

By the way—if you’re wondering when kids are ready to listen to chapter books, I can share our experience. I started reading these aloud to my hija mayor a few months before she turned 4, which was perfect for her. Hija #2, two years younger, would occasionally listen in; but wasn’t REALLY interested in these longer stories until this year (she’s also newly 4). There’s no prize for moving on from picture books super early, of course. The most important thing is for reading to be fun, not frustrating! But in my experience, any time between 3.5 – 6 years old is a good place to start. And you can always go back to picture books if chapter books aren’t working). 

SPANISH CHAPTER BOOKS FOR PRESCHOOLERS

Yasmin la constructora

I bought this one recently thinking it would be good for my oldest (6) ¡pero le duró un suspiro! I would definitely categorize this book as an easy-reader (big text, lots of illustrations), so it’s perfect for emerging readers. My 4-year-old and I also read it together and it was great for her. This series, about a spunky Pakistani American girl, has a few books in it, which is always nice! I also appreciated the little glossary at the back, and I think each book has different craft and recipe ideas (this one has facts about Pakistan and instructions for building your own cardboard building).

La princesa de negro

Disclaimer that our copy (from Amazon) was NOT very well printed (there were several parts where whole sentences ran together into one giant word with no spaces). That unfortunate fact aside, my daughters were very into this story of Princesa Magnolia, who is summoned by her monstruo-alarma while having tea con la chismosa de la Duquesa Pelucatiesa. Gotta love a spunky, monster-fighting heroine! This one also has very big text and lots of illustrations, though it’s a little longer than the “Yasmin” ones.

Valentina

Valentina is a princess, but she dreams of hunting dragons just like her brothers do. She is NOT excited about creating elaborate hairstyles or wearing fancy dresses like her sisters. So even though she’s supposed to stay home, when a fierce dragon threatens to eat the children in the kingdom, Valentina sneaks out behind all of the knights to conquer the beast. Will she defeat the dragon, or is she better off leaving dragon-hunting to the men? This book was originally written in Spanish which is always a plus! And we all really liked it. 🙂

El ratoncito de la moto

A Beverly Cleary book I had never heard of! This story, about little mouse who meets a boy staying at his hotel and starts riding his toy motorcycle, is so cute! My oldest daughter and I read this one together a year or two ago and it was the first one where she was just on the edge of her seat, asking me to read another chapter. The translation was well-done, too; although one thing about reading translated chapter books is that, in my admittedly limited experience, they all do read like translations somehow. I feel like that’s not always the case for translated picture books—just something about those longer stories I guess.

Ramona la chinche

Another (very famous) Beverly Cleary hit! I’ve heard the Ramona series is phenomenal & gets even better after “Ramona la chinche” (“Ramona the Pest” in English). I need to hunt for the other books in the series in Spanish! This book, in which Ramona starts kindergarten, was perfect to read together in the months before my oldest started kindergarten. (Which she never did, lol—thank you COVID—but this book did help her get excited for school.)

Domingo Teporingo

We LOVED the first book we read in this collection of stories about Domingo, a Teporingo rabbit, who lives with his friends in El Refugio. I heard these books described as “similar to the animal worlds created by A.A. Milne, but reimagined in the mountains of Mexico,” and I think that summary is perfect. These charming stories are a perfect little escape (especially true for us during the pandemic). We read “Invierno” a few months ago, and writing this post reminded me that I need to pull out “Primavera” to read (we’ll do one each season this year)!

La telaraña de Carlota

This was the very first chapter book I attempted to read with a then-3-year-old. We ended up having to put it down for many months and come back to it later because the story was a little hard for my daughter to follow. Like I said, no prizes for moving on to chapter books too early! Once we DID pick it up, she loved the story just like I hoped she would. Reminder that this book starts off with a rather detailed conversation of wanting to kill little Wilbur the pig! I forgot that small detail and wasn’t mentally prepared the first time around to discuss animal slaughter with my small child, haha.

Charlie y la fábrica de chocolate

I remember reading this one as a kid! It was so fun to see my own kid love every crazy, magical part. I think Roald Dahl’s brain must have been quite a fantastic place. Most of his books are wonderful, but I think this is probably the one with the most kid-appeal. (I mean, endless amounts of candy…)

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As always, I hope this list is helpful! I think it’s so important to continue giving our kids access to reading material in Spanish as they get older. And to be honest it’s been challenging for me! Our library doesn’t really have Spanish chapter books for preschoolers like these. So I hope this roundup can help someone in the same boat. And I would love to hear your suggestions if you have any!

P.S. These are some of the early chapter books in English that we’ve read together, in case you’re interested: Matilda, Mr. Popper’s Penguins, The BFG, (also available in Spanish!), Time at the Top, Ivy and Bean series, and a few from The Boxcar Children series.

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I always feel so lucky to be a mom in what I think is the golden age of children’s literature. Libros en español? Check. Books with Black or Afro-Latinx protagonists? Check. Spanish books with Black characters? Check!

While there still aren’t NEARLY enough books centering POC characters, and there’s definitely a reason we have the #weneeddiversebooks movement, I am so very glad to have these options to read at home with my hijas.

The last time I did a roundup of Spanish books with Black characters was a few years ago, so I thought we were due for an update! All of the books below are phenomenal ones we’ve read and loved, and I hope you love them too!

FAVORITE SPANISH BOOKS FEATURING BLACK CHARACTERS

Sirenas

Little Julián and his Abuela are on their way home from the pool one day when they see some spectacularly dressed women on the subway. They look just like mermaids! Julián is enchanted. “Yo también soy una sirena,” he tells Abuela. While Abuela goes to take a shower, Julián has a flash of inspiration! With the fronds of a potted fern in his hair and a curtain wrapped around his waist for a tail, he’s living his best life until Abuela sees him (and the mess). Is Julián in trouble? This book is such a powerful affirmation of individuality, creative expression and unconditional acceptance!

Lola y el dragón

Lola and her beloved cat, Bola, have an important event to attend: a costume party! The party is just getting good (there’s a dessert table!) when all of a sudden, a terrible dragon flies over and scoops up little Bola. Lola, a true heroine for our times, immediately recruits her friends to help with the rescue. But eventually Lola finds herself alone, with nothing but her courage and her creativity to help her rescue her beloved cat. Alone, that is, until she bumps into an unexpected little someone…

Schomburg: El hombre que creó una biblioteca

Arturo Schomburg, an Afro-Puerto Rican, was a law clerk. But his passion was collecting books, letters, music and art from Africa and the African diaspora, as he worked to honor “people of African descent through the ages.” Eventually, his collection grew so much that it threatened to overtake his whole house! And that’s when he turned to the New York Public Library. This is the story of how he put together his famous collection.

¡Gracias, Omu!

Omu has made a delicious red stew for her lunch. And not only does it taste fabulous, it also smells AMAZING! So when the smell wafts out of her apartment and into the neighborhood, her neighbors can’t help but follow their noses to see where that delectable scent is coming from. One by one, Omu offers each person that knocks at her door a taste of her wonderful stew. But when dinner time finally comes around and it’s her turn to eat, the pot is empty! Has Omu been so generous that there’s nothing left for her?

El día en que descubres quién eres

The Spanish translation of “The Day You Begin” is just as lovely as the original English version! In this book, we start the school year along with Angelina, who (along with a few of her classmates) feels like an outsider. Whether because of home language, food diversity, skin color, or even the way they talk, the message here is that these differences make each child unique and, at the same time, a beautiful part of the community they now share.

El elefante

A young boy finds a book about elephants on his shelf. Along with him, we discover so many amazing facts about these giant creatures that make their home from Africa to Asia! For example: just like humans can be right- or left-handed, elephants can be right tusked or left tusked! The book’s accessible text is paired with clever and beautiful illustrations that turn interesting facts (an African elephant’s tusks grow up to 8 feet long) with visual examples (two seven-year-olds lounging toe-to-toe on an elephant’s tusk).

Ada Magnífica, científica

We love this translation of the English “Ada Twist, Scientist.” If translation is challenging, translation of rhymes is doubly so! This one is extremely well-done though, and introduces us to the curious little Ada, who is full of questions she just HAS to know the answers to (¿por qué tienes pelos en la naríz?). So when her house fills with a horrible smell, Ada knows it’s up to her to figure out why. But when her scientific experiments in the name of discovery lead to even more stink, will Ada be in big trouble?

Jabari salta

Jabari has learned to swim and is working up the courage to jump off the high dive–but he just can’t seem to take the leap! He has almost decided that actually, TOMORROW is the best day to jump, when his father tells him the little secret that helps him discover his bravery.

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I hope you’ll check out some of these Spanish books with Black characters! I’m publishing this post during Black History Month, but EVERY month of the year would be a perfect time to read them. 🙂 I’d love to know if there are any favorites of yours that I’ve missed!

P.S. 7 more phenomenal books featuring Afro-Latinx characters.

*Note: Amazon links are affiliate links, meaning that if you click a link and make a purchase I may get a small commission. It won’t change how much you pay for an item.

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Is there anything sweeter than little board books all set up in the nursery, just waiting for a baby to love (and slobber on) them? 

Today I’m sharing the very best Spanish board books, the ones that all three of my babies have loved. Several of these are translations of English books, BUT they’re so well done that you won’t mind rereading them 600 times (give or take). 

If you’re interested in Spanish board books at all, you’ve probably heard of Lil’ Libros already. We’ve loved those books too! But all of the recommendations below have a little more of a story, so they’re nice for babies and toddlers who can probably benefit from longer books but are still in page-ripping territory. 

BEST SPANISH BOARD BOOKS FOR BABIES AND TODDLERS

El pez pucheros

I think it’s important to note that our copy of this is looking preeeetty rough because of how many times we’ve read it (and how many times it’s been packed in a bag or backpack to take on adventures and trips). The Spanish translation is incredibly well-done! All of the different fish characters make it easy to do different voices, and when the book ends with a bunch of fish smooches? That is DEFINITELY a good reason to also smother your baby with kisses. 🙂 

Cada oveja con su pareja

A little book about mama and baby animals who dance together, perfect for the tiniest babies! Extra points for a subtle vocabulary lesson as each adult and baby animal is named (gallina/pollito, paloma/pichón, oveja/cordero, etc.). You can also find the song for this book online and sing the words instead of read them. This book is a current hit with my 15-month-old who loves to make all the different animal sounds when we read it. 

Dos en el zoológico/Two at the Zoo

We’ve also loved this bilingual book about a grandson/grandpa duo who visit the zoo. From one “oso pardo” to ten warthogs with “mucho pelo, dientes y pies,” they visit each zoo animal until “el abuelo está cansado” and it’s time to go home. (Love that that line is accompanied by an illustration of the little boy giving a big yawn, haha). The translation between English and Spanish isn’t literal, which is amazing because it rhymes so well in both languages. 

¿Quién se comió mi fruta?

El pequeño gato is so hungry! He has four pieces of fruit to choose from, but when he goes to eat… someone has already taken a bite of ALL his fruit! Will there be anything at all left for him? This is a cute story with bright illustrations and flaps you open to reveal which animal has eaten each fruit (conejo ate the pear, just FYI).  

 La jirafa Rafa

This book comes with a QR code on the back that you can scan to hear the song that goes with it! You can sing along as la jirafa Rafa lives his best life in the savanna. The song is super catchy and adds a lot to the bright illustrations and simple rhymes. 

¿Eres mi mamá?

It’s a classic for a reason! The Spanish translation of “Are You My Mother?” is a well-done translation of the story we all know and love, as a baby bird looks everywhere for the mama bird. Extra points if you bounce your child on your knee when the egg is hatching and do your best animal voices while you read!

Caperucita roja

This book is a lovely version of this classic story. It’s a little larger than most board books and has a fairly significant amount of text. One very cool thing about it is how the illustrations are either raised or indented, so that they have inviting texture for babies to touch. 

Los tres cerditos

We also have this version of the three little pigs story, by the same author as Caperucita Roja above. Again, a big, sturdy book with lovely illustrations. Fair warning that the pigs put the wolf in a pot at the end (spoiler alert!) and one Amazon reviewer said it was too scary for her kids so… YMMV. 

Perritos: Un libro para contar y ladrar

When I asked for Spanish board book recommendations on Instagram, this book came up more than any other! Sandra Boynton is always a hit. The Spanish version of this book is very cute, and it’s so fun to count (and bark) along with all of the perritos.

Canticos Books

We also have really loved all of the Canticos books that bring Latin American nursery rhymes and songs to an American audience. Each book is bilingual English/Spanish! There are a lot to choose from, but Little Chickies / Los Pollitos , Little Mice / Ratoncitos, Little Sunny Sunshine / Sol Solecito, and All the Colors / De colores are my personal favorites.

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And there you have it! Did I miss any of YOUR best Spanish board books? It’s never too early to start reading to your baby, so I hope these books will help start that crucial habit as soon as possible. And any of these options would make great baby shower gifts for proud new papás!

P.S. I am also a very, very big fan of reading picture books to a baby!

Amazon links are affiliate links, meaning that if you click a link and make a purchase I may get a small commission. It won’t change how much you pay for an item.

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