I firmly believe that all of my academic and professional  achievements can be traced back to my grandmother’s kitchen.  It was there that I learned to love words.  Because of my quiet demeanor, I was allowed to listen to great storytelling.   

I don’t think anyone ever read to me.  I started school later than most kids.  I was a monolingual Spanish speaker.  I was raised by a working class single mom.  But none of that set me back because I arrived to school equipped with a large vocabulary and knowing how to pay attention to words and how they were spoken.   

We know that kids are sponges, but we can’t take for granted that kids see or absorb everything they need to or that they understand what they are seeing and feeling.  That’s where storytelling comes in.  Storytelling is such a powerful tool that it is one of the five recommendations of the science-based learning campaign, the Boston Basics, which is trying to close the skills gap between socio-economic, racial, and ethnic groups. (boston.thebasics.org) 

The challenge is that storytelling is not easy or natural for alot of us, including me.   This is complicated by the fact that most books for toddlers and early readers do not have much text and parents and grandparents don’t always know how to use them as a springboard for talking about their own experiences and memories.  

By including a lot of words in short stanzas, in both English and Spanish, and accompanying them with beautiful illustrations, I hope my books make storytelling easier, especially for working class families.