About: Ana Flores

The Storyteller's Candle" is a book about New York City's first Latina librarian, a puertorrican named Pura Belpré, who was a gifted storyteller back in the late 1920s. Belpré's story is told through the eyes of two cousins, Hildamar and Santiago, who recently moved from Puerto Rico to NYC and are wondering how they're going to celebrate El Día de los Reyes or Three Kings' Day now that they live so far away from the island. In comes Belpré, who pays Hildamar's class a visit, and tells the children about the public library and how it belongs to everyone - no matter what language they speak. And, best of all, she let's them know about the library's Three Kings Day celebration!  ...

Recently, as I was putting on extremely red lipstick in preparation for one of those rare occasions when my husband and I reply “yes” to an adult party invitation, Vanessa – who was running around like a chicken with its head cutoff from my bathroom to my room – stopped dead in her tracks and looked up at me in admiration. She has just started to ask what things are called by pointing to whatever and asking: llama? Short for:Read More ...

Basically, every expert on the subject agrees that if you want your child to learn a new  language, just exposing them to “educational” media in that language won’t-on its own-increase their chances of learning it. For maximum language absorption, children need to be actively involved with caregivers, family and/or friends who verbally interact with them through play and daily activities. ...

¡Hola y bienvenidos! Thanks a million for coming to visit. We hope you take a few minutes to check out SpanglishBaby so you can see for yourselves what we are all about… As two Latina, first-time mothers, Ana and I found ourselves with lots of questions about how to raise our daughters bilingual in a monolingual society. SpanglishBaby is the answer to all those doubts…and more! We hope to become the online community to go to when anyone (not onlyRead More ...

Before Vanessa started preschool a couple of months after she turned two, I often wondered how she was going to survive for four hours surrounded solely by English.  I worried that others would think she had no manners because even though she already understood the concept of “gracias” and “por favor,” she knew nothing about “thanks” and “please.” I explained the situation to her teachers and they reassured me everything would be fine. You see, up until then, her lifeRead More ...

Why is it that even though you’ve read tons of books and sites on the subject, and have freakishly asked all your friends-who already went through it-for advice and have been reassured that it’s totally normal, you still panic when it starts happening to you? OK, here’s the issue: my daughter, Camila, started going to daycare last November for two days a week. She was 15 months at the time. Until then, her primary source of language-learning was at homeRead More ...