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I recently took a 3-month break from hosting story time, due to life, travel, and the fact that my normal Thursday morning slot was being used for another program. It has been three years since I started hosting bilingual family story time (BFST) at my branch. My program is in English and Spanish. Some of our other branches have story time exclusively in other languages (Spanish and Mandarin) that are hosted by contracted story tellers. Here are things that I do that have helped me find success in my story times.

Translating Books

I love a good story time theme. I feel that having a theme really helps with designing how a story time flows, helps kids understand concepts, and can reflect life events (such as holidays, seasons, etc.). While searching for titles for BFST, I realized that there just weren’t that many titles already available either in Spanish or bilingually for many of the themes I wanted to do. To do themes, I would need to create my own translations. I would spend hours going through potential titles to assess the length, content, and how feasible it could be translated. Here are the types of translations I do:

1:1 translation

• Easy to do if the book exists as a bilingual title or has separate English and Spanish edition.
• If no Spanish edition exists, I translate by hand and run it through Google
• Translate to catch any grammatical errors (while I grew up speaking and reading Spanish, writing in it was never my strong suit).
• I type up the translation, print, then cut and tape into the book.

Inclusions

• Titles that sprinkle in Spanish words. Book is not fully bilingual, but the message still comes across to speakers of either or both languages.
  • Example titles: Mi Casa is My Home written by Laurenne Sala & illustrated by Zara González Hoang,Menudo Sunday: A Spanglish Counting Book written by María Dolores Águila & illustrated by Erika Meza
• If I have a relatively short English only book, I’ll do sight translations as I read.

I also do my best to includes titles that are created by Hispanic/Latine authors and illustrators. It is incredibly important to me that diversity is reflected during story time.

Translating Songs

Translating songs is where it got tricky for me, as sometimes phrases can get lost in translation, or no longer follows a recognizable tune. When I went to ALA Annual 2024 in San Diego, I attended Sheridan Jay Cazarez’s pre-conference workshop Bilingual Storytime Academy. He gave us some amazing examples that he had translated himself that are available on his website, BiblioCuentos. Since we have a mix of Spanish and non-Spanish speaking families attending story time, I keep printed versions of our story time songs available for parents/caregivers to use during story time. This makes it easy for families to follow along. I rotate my transition songs about every 3 months, as I find that this is a good amount of time for families to learn a song.

I feel like I can talk endlessly about BFST, so I want to hear from you! Does your branch host a bilingual story time? In what language? What has worked for your program and what do you hope to improve on? Please share your thoughts in the comments below!

Maria Leon-Roman is a Children’s Services Librarian at the Seattle Public Library (SPL). Her childhood love of books and libraries inspired her to try to apply for a library job at the age of 8. She eventually got hired as a Student Assistant at age 17 and has spent the last 12 years working through the ranks at SPL. She is currently serving as co-chair of the ALSC Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion committee. Outside of work, Maria loves to play video games, bake, and obsess over her dog, Simón.

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