Reading books with our children is an excellent way to connect with them, and to instill reading habits in them. Also, many families of newcomers want to promote their mother language, but finding books in their language can be a difficult task. For these reasons, at Christmas 2021 we carried out the project “Cuentos en Familia 2021” (Family Tales 2021).
With the help from Settlement workers who work with Spanish Speakers, we were able to contact 13 families with children ages 1 to 15 who were interested in receiving books in Spanish for Christmas.
The first thing was to contact the families and ask them about the characteristics of the children in the house. To give a book as a gift, it is important to know the tastes and age of the reader. With that information we search for books by different authors, nationalities, topics and publishers. The final selection of books included dinosaurs, soccer monkeys, artist pigs, children traveling to space, and even a girl navigating the world of philosophy.
Three days before December 25, we went to deliver the books to each family’s house, wrapped in gift paper and ready for the children to enjoy.
Here are some words from Ivana’s mom:
“ (..) I did not want to miss the opportunity to thank you for all the love and effort you have put into carrying out this wonderful project through which you have helped us Spanish-speaking families in Vancouver to promote and preserve our rich and beautiful Spanish language. We chose El Mundo de Sofía because we believe that in “information times” the important thing will be to develop critical thinking and what better way to do it than through philosophical thinking. Once again, thank you very much for everything.”
Thank you Neighbourhood Small Grants for making this project possible!
