The Spanglish Girl, by Natalia Simons

The Spanglish Girl is a story written by Natalia Simons where she works on bilingualism as a way of learning from childhood. We launch the book in a storytelling session organised by the teacher Magaly Flores, who wants to encourage the creativity of the youngest children through reading and creative activities. 

In this story, you can meet Anna, a little girl who spends her summers in a village in Spain with her grandparents. The rest of the year she lives in England. Although Anna visits Spain every year, she cannot speak much Spanish yet. She only speaks it a bit at home, with her mum. The children in the Spanish village laugh at the way she talks; they say that Anna speaks differently than them. Her grandma reminds her how lucky she is to be able to speak two languages, Spanish and English, and to have two different cultures. 

Natalia Simons comment that "writing has always been a passion of mine, so when the pandemic hit, I had more time and I decided to write the book because I wanted to help bilingual children feel identified with a story and for monolingual children to learn Spanish and be aware of different cultures".