If you’re searching for quality picture books to read aloud to your students here’s a solution.

Language teachers often have a problem finding quality materials for their students when it comes to reading aloud. I have had trouble finding target language picture books that are compelling and comprehensible to my students. Read Aloud Time is one of the most popular parts of my classes. For years my habit was to take the time to read a picture book aloud to students once a week. I showed them delightful stories and talked to them in the target language at their level, and the students were delighted. It reminded us all of a time when school was a more loving and a fun experience. That’s worth revisiting.

If you are looking for quality books, any book written and illustrated by Chris Van Allsburg is good, but The Wretched Stone is especially good.  It has been one of my favorites for years. I have read it to my own children, grandchildren, and to my students as a cautionary tale about the dangers of electronic media. Here is an article and an embedded reading adaption of the book in English and in Spanish.

I wanted to share this delightful story with my students, but I could never find an edition of the book in Spanish—and even if I did, it would have been too difficult for novice students to understand and enjoy. This is because children’s books contain so many rare words—more rare words per 1,000 than an adult news program (!).

It occurred to me that when I was reading during our weekly Read Aloud Time that students normally cannot see the text anyway, so why not just show them the pictures in the original English version of the book and tell the story in simplified Spanish?

That’s the trick. Find a good read aloud book and