Product Review

Isabela Huffman is a precocious 8 1/2-year-old girl who can't seem to keep herself out of trouble on a visit to Guanajuato, Mexico, with her mother. She wants to be the president when she grows up. Or a ballerina. Or the president and a ballerina. She's dramatic. She sings on the bus, screams like a baby after putting chile powder on her fresh mango and convinces her mom to buy five pair of new shoes for a big family. No matter how many times her mom asks her to just sit down like a normal little girl, she just can't help getting up to take more pictures of her adventures. When will Isabela ever sit down? Las aventuras de Isabela is the first novel in a new series for true beginners (more are to follow soon). It uses a vocabulary of only 200 Spanish words to tell a 2,200-word story. It is repetitive and simple and uses many cognates to make the book comprehensible to beginning adults and children.