About: Marika

Marika Lynch is president of Marika Lynch Communications, which helps nonprofit clients increase their impact through storytelling. Before opening the firm in 2008, Marika was an award-winning reporter and editor for the Miami Herald, where she covered stories from Tallahassee to Bogota. She earned her bachelor's in history and Latin American studies at Georgetown University and served as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar in Mexico City. She lives in Miami with her husband and three boys.

Twitter: @marikalynch

31 Days of Reading in Spanish: El Gallo de Bodas

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Editor’s note: We continue with our 31 Days of Reading in Spanish. Check out the book review below and don’t forget to enter our weekly GIVEAWAY of $100 worth of books in Spanish! BOOK DESCRIPTION/REVIEW Here’s why my kids like this book: it has a rooster, a talking goat, and a fire. (I have three boys ages 5 and under. They are easily entertained.) However, I don’t want to discount the beauty of this simple story. It’s a Cuban folktaleRead More ...

31 Days of Reading in Spanish: Los Reyes Magos de Oriente

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Editor’s note: We continue with our 31 Days of Reading in Spanish. Check out the book review below and don’t forget to enter our weekly GIVEAWAY of $100 worth of books in Spanish! BOOK DESCRIPTION/REVIEW Our family is in full summer swing – weekends at the beach, bedtimes stretched until the sun goes down. But nothing makes me long for Christmas like a book my in-laws gave me a few years ago, Los Reyes Magos de Oriente. The book tellsRead More ...

The Quest to Raise Bilingual Kids Never Ends

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Mami, hoy es January? That’s my 5-year-old asking from the back seat. I’m thrilled — finally the kids are getting the hang of time — the difference between seconds, minutes, days and months. But his question is also a harsh reminder. He is learning most of these new concepts in school. In school, they teach purely in English. And now the corollary — my husband and I, their only Spanish teachers, will never be able to keep up. We hadRead More ...

Learning the Vocabulary of Childhood… in Spanish

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Handy Manny was the first to render me speechless. My twins were toddlers, and my mother-in-law had given them a Handy Manny tool box for Christmas. Awesome gift, hours of play time ensured. We ripped it open, started in with all of Manny’s tools, his martillo, his…his…. A whole set of toys were splayed before me and I didn’t know the Spanish word for any of them. El serrucho y el destornillador - somehow those words never made it into theRead More ...

Ingredients For A Thanksgiving Drama: Butter, Bread and Abuela’s Recipes

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The biggest fights in the early part of my marriage revolved around a recipe. A Thanksgiving recipe. For stuffing no less! It sounds absolutely ridiculous to me now, typing those words out loud — and frustrating that we wasted so much emotion over an innocuous mass of old bread and drippings. But then, it really wasn’t a battle of corn versus white bread to begin with. If this fight had a name it would be Babita v. Hazel, the battle ofRead More ...

How to Prepare Spanish-dominant Kids for English-only School

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Ask my mother-in-law about U.S. Geography and she throws her hands up in defeat. In her elementary school, geography was taught in the third grade — the year she arrived from Cuba. Instead of memorizing state capitals, she was busy learning a new language, culture and city. Academically, third grade was a bust. I’ve been thinking a lot about that story recently as I prepare to send my youngest to a preschool. He’s a rambunctious child whose English vocabulary isRead More ...

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