Baby Babas is the first title from the international creative team at Babas Bilingual Books. It's a bilingual storybook of a German Shepherd dog and her Boy - the Babas Reading Therapy Dog Team - and takes the reader along on a reading-dog-with-a-job visit to an elementary school.
Babas is an old lady now and falls asleep after her and her boy settle in. In her sleep she dreams about the day she first met her boy. He found her at Lake Atitlán in Guatemala and adventure ensued.
All titles from Babas Bilingual Books are a different kind of English/Spanish dual language trade book. The author is a bilingual language arts professional educator and literacy coach, and works in consultation with his mother - a veteran of three decades teaching reading and teaching reading teachers.
The illustrations were created by Cuban national Eduardo Navarro who lives and works in Havana. Eduardo is a respected, award winning painter and sculptor in Havana and Haiti, but has very limited access to the international market. This creative collaboration provides him with an income allowing for more of his time to be spent doing art and gaining exposure.
The text is not a translation. It is a co-authored collaboration between a native English speaker and a native Spanish speaker. Bianca Villasante also lives with her family in Havana, Cuba. This trade book avoids the pitfalls of other titles that, as good as they are in English, lose in translation.
The beginning and end of the story are calibrated to the end of 2nd grade reading level and focus on fluency and mastery of complex grammatical conventions. The middle of the book, when Babas dreams, is simple enough to be decoded by a kindergartner.
The text is written in a special font specifically designed to be more easily read by dyslexic children and the two languages are color coded using a method made famous by the Gomez and Gomez dual language educational model.
Baby Babas is a 42-page, English/Spanish bilingual storybook and trade-book with full color illustrations and two hand drawn maps. It aims to impart the ever more important lessons of compassion and companionship to the children of all ages who might read it. Studies show that kids can be taught empathy and charity and those that learn these lesson at a young age live happier and emotionally healthier lives.
Tag along on a day in the lives of Babas and her boy as they use their relationship and skills to teach compassion and reading, in English and Spanish, to the next generation of dual language learners in Austin, Texas and beyond!
About the Author: Ryan Stimmel is an author, an educator, a professional traveler and a creative. While traveling through Guatemala in 2005 he survived a natural disaster that killed hundreds of Guatemalans in a town nearby to where he was studying Spanish. In response he established a not-for-profit organization tasked with entertaining and educating many of the children of the families affected. During that time he found Babas and later brought her back to his home in Texas. He spent six years as a professional bilingual educator first in Dallas then in Austin. He taught kindergarten and fifth grades and then spent three years as a support specialist and literacy coach. When the Obama Administration began thawing relations with Cuba he took a hiatus from his career as an educator and founded a travel agency and tour operator intent upon taking Americans to meet their Cuban neighbors and exchanging ideas around socially responsible and environmentally sustainable travel practices. Spanish language co-author Bianca Villasante lives with her husband David and son Carlos in Havana, Cuba. She is a professionally trained psychologist but works more as a tour guide and event organizer. She is a lover of poetry and prose and a cinephile, and her adoration of language and stories brings a much higher level of Spanish to the reader than Ryan would have been capable of producing on his own.
