If you teach heritage speakers, or Spanish 3, 4, 5, or AP Spanish, you need to get this book into your students’ hands. El libro salvaje, by esteemed Mexican author Juan Villoro, was published in Mexico and has been around since 2008, but Spanish teachers in the United States may not be aware of it. It’s an interesting story and valuable for Spanish students—a compelling tale with mystery and light romance that encourages reading. What’s not to love? I read this book with an adult I am tutoring in Spanish and it helped him immensely. Then I read it again, and again; making notes all along the way.

I recommend getting this novel at least for your classroom library and perhaps for whole class reading with level 4. The protagonist is a 13-year-old boy with a very smart girlfriend. The reading level seems right for high level 3, as well as for level 4 or 5 Spanish students or native speakers.

I have long recommended the Harry Potter books in Spanish to help with grammar acquisition, and I even wrote a book to help students with it, Read Harry Potter in Spanish.  Those books are a good way to get students to pick up grammar painlessly because they are told from an omniscient narrator that explains how everyone is scheming and thinking about what everyone else wants, so there are many instances of the subjunctive.

El libro salvaje has even more subjunctive usage interwoven into an engaging story.

This novel will appeal to students and as they read they will pick up amazing amounts of grammar. As Stephen Krashen has observed:

“Acquisition of the subjunctive was related to the amount of free voluntary reading done in Spanish, not to amount of study, including specific study of the subjunctive, or length of residence in a Spanish-speaking country.”

―Stephen Krashen (2001). Free Voluntary Reading, p. 27

According to this study, the only significant predictor of the ability to use the subjunctive was the amount of free voluntary reading done in Spanish; not the amount of formal study of Spanish, not the amount of study specifically aimed at the subjunctive, and not even how long subjects had lived in a Spanish-speaking country. Those were not significant predictors of subjunctive competence. Reading was.

We may still need to teach some aspects of grammar overtly, but frequent reading at the right level will make all aspects of grammar more comprehensible. Reading will make it stick with students. Novels are the way to go because they are enjoyable. Reading a novel is different than studying, and students pick up more useful grammar as they read. It’s a win/win.

The advanced grammar intertwined in El libro salvaje will get your students to understand and use grammar that they would otherwise have to painfully slog through. They will soak it up unconsciously while they read this engaging story. That’s what happened with my Spanish students with Harry Potter, and it happened again before my eyes with my adult student.

As my mentor, Susan Gross used to say: “Shelter vocabulary, not grammar. As much as possible, we need to stay within the circle of words our students mostly know right now (also known as “staying in bounds”), and at the same time use whatever grammar is natural and useful at the moment.

Here are a few delights and helpful teaching aids found in the book:

• The protagonist does not like to read. He mentions several times that he doesn’t really like to read and that he is not a good student. His wacky but kindly uncle assures him that it’s OK not to like to read because a book will choose him. And Juan (the main character) admits that he does have a few books that he likes to read over and over. This is precisely what we need to do with our students that are reluctant readers—find books that will grab them.

• 113 uses of “como si…” expressions. These sayings use the past subjunctive and often express imaginary ideas or statements contrary to fact in the story, usually with valuable metaphors. Those 113 expressions cannot be happenstance. The author is training readers to compare concrete events and observations with counterfactual ideas in their minds—a valuable habit to instill in students. It expands their thinking. Rather than being distracting, these como si… expressions enrich the story immensely.

• 622 (!) uses of the subjunctive in the story. That’s about three times per page!  I admit it was a bit obsessive of me to actually count every one of them, but I was focusing on the subjunctive with an adult student and assuring him that simply by reading for pleasure he would begin to pick it up—and he has.

• 23 “darse cuenta de…” expressions. The author seems to want readers to realize some things they hadn’t before.

• It encourages more reading because, 1) the protagonist eventually becomes a reader, 2) his girlfriend is an avid reader, 3) the eponymous character of the story, el libro salvaje, is a book that cannot be tamed and we want to find out what that means, 4) it takes place in the vast personal library of his eccentric uncle which features a Salón de Lectores, a Hall of Readers, with marble statues of great readers throughout history, rather than great authors—an interesting twist, and 5) it alludes to many well-known authors and their works from both the English and Spanish-speaking worlds. The authors Jorge Luís Borges, Julio Cortazar, Dante, Heraclites and Eratosthenes are all mentioned. And books mentioned by title are: Moby Dick, Metamorphosis, The Rights of Man, 1001 Arabian Nights, Robinson Crusoe, Alice in Wonderland and the Sherlock Holmes novels.

• The potential errors of overusing technology are mentioned 8 times — something to keep in mind in our headlong embrace of anything new and shiny that we think will help us… but may actually be hurting us. Villoro does not vilify technology but encourages the reader to be cautious with it.

• The story alludes to the “otherness” that many of us (and especially teenagers) often feel. The protagonist and his uncle both compare themselves to the ornitorrinco (duckbilled platypus)—an exotic creature that defies classification and seems to made of many different animal parts. This happens at least 10 times in the story. I have known a lot of kids that feel like this.

• Individualized interpretations. My favorite chapter is La historia que cuenta un libro no siempre es igual, because who hasn’t read a book and got something entirely different when reading it again? I’ve often discussed a book with friends who picked up completely different messages from it than I did. Haven’t we all?

• Books are our friends. These lines from the end of the book have stuck with me:

En los momentos de angustia en que me sentí más solo, los libros fueron mis compañeros. Desde entonces han estado conmigo en las buenas y en las malas.

“In these times when reading holds less appeal for many students, we need to get compelling and valuable books like this into their hands so that books can become their companions in good times and in bad.”

Get El libro salvaje and read it and then read it again with your students. It’s more than worth your time.

P.S. We do not sell this book on our website.