Reading Wednesday - Santos y Angeles by Claire Llewellyn

So I learned a lot about the English language by reading. I'm familiar with the grammar, how to write in English, how to spell the words, etc. Yes, it is my native language, but I feel I have a lot of extra skill with English just from reading. So in order to improve my skill with a second language, Spanish, I challenge myself to read in Spanish. I try to pick books that will help me increase my vocabulary, but that aren't way past my level. So I end up reading a lot of children's books in Spanish. Enter Santos y Angeles.

This book has beautiful illustrations of the saints. And by illustrations, I mean images of famous artwork of the saints. It doesn't have a ton of saints, but it does include a lot of the popular ones. I learned a lot of Catholic words in Spanish, which I thought was pretty cool. It was just at my reading level - a topic I was familiar with so I could infer what a lot of the words meant but didn't feel overwhelmed. I also learned a lot of really interesting stuff about the saints, which is great.

I also used this book as a reference in my catechism class about the saints. Most of my students don't read or speak Spanish at all, but they still enjoyed looking through the book to find their favorite saint. Again, the pictures are gorgeous.

This book gets four stars, both for the information and images it contains, and for it's ability to help me learn Spanish. I'd love to own an English version of this book as well someday.