Tuesday, March 25, 2014

"My Brother Is My Best Friend" by Nicole Weaver and illustrated by Clara Batton Smith

In My Brother Is  My Best Friend the author, Nicole Weaver tells a story of brothers who value each other not just as brothers but as friends as well.

The story is presented in tri-lingual format. This puts a lot of text on each page for the young reader to cull through, but each sentence for each different language is color coded. Example: English is black, Spanish is red, and French is blue. So to read the story in Spanish you simply focus on the red text on each page.

Blake and Drake are twin brothers whose adventures are cute, loving, and heartwarming. They have a special bond.They go through daily life inquisitive about the little things that  bring delight and joy to boys, being boys. While the two are twins, I can see the same loving bonding in non-twin brothers as well



The story itself is great. The tri-lingual text is great for those who are learning second and/or third languages. While the idea is great, I personally believe that publishing it in two languages at a time would be better. 

There are two glossaries - French to English and Spanish to English.There is also an activity where the reader has a sentence and they are to match that Spanish or French sentence in English
The illustrations by Clara Batton Smith are cute and engaging. I thoroughly enjoyed them and know children would! 

GIVEAWAY: The author is providing a copy for one of Chat With Vera's readers.  Use the Rafflecopter entry form below. Begins March 25 & ENDS April 11 @ 12:01 EDT. Open to USA addresses only.
DISCLOSURE: The author provided a complimentary in exchange for this review. Opinions expressed are solely my own.

16 comments:

  1. Wow! I'm not sure I've ever seen a trilingual children's book before. My kids would enjoy comparing the languages, but then, they're nerdy like their dad and me! :) Thanks so much for sharing this book and a few others at Booknificent Thursdays! I popped in and looked at them all but our internet is horrible this week so I wasn't able to leave comments on all of them. I hope you don't mind! Hope to see you again soon!
    Tina

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  2. I think when a book features other languages that it helps children to learn more. Nicole Weaver has penned three trilingual children's pictures books, which is really quite amazing.

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  3. would be nice to compare and good teachin tool

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  4. Nicole Weaver's book is a trilingual language book, offering English, French, and Spanish.

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  5. Being in mult-languages helps children learn some words in different languages.

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  6. Nicole was born in Haiti and has bi-racial kids of her own.

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  7. She was born in Port Au Prince Haiti and has another book titled My Sister is my Best Friend

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  8. Tri-lingual ! Now that's very interesting! Thanks for sharing the review on Kidlit Bloghop. I would love to see this one in the library,
    -Reshama @ Stackingbooks

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  9. I think it's great to incorporate multiple languages in children's book because it introduces them to the sounds and a few words of another language. The child can still follow the story in their native language so I feel like they can understand the foreign languages better.

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  10. I think having the book in the language most important for that child makes it great. All children need to have access to books in their own language.

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  11. She has also written the books My sister is my best friend and Marie and her friend the sea turtle.

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  12. This book should be in all elementary school libraries! What a good idea. Sadly, other than English, I would only be able to make out a few Spanish words. But, maybe it would also help you learn another language. Thanks for sharing on the Kit Lit Blog Hop.

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  13. The theme of each of Nicoles books is compassion
    marypopmom (at) yahoo (dot) com
    Merry

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  14. I think its good that books are bi lingual or tri lingual because we live in a global society and our kids need to learn globally and become global thinkers and learners
    marypopmom (at) yahoo (dot) com
    Merry

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  15. Awesome. Trying to teach my son french. What a great idea to have 3 languages!

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  16. Nicole was born in Haiti and has bi-racial kids of her own

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