Three young children share the pleasure of sitting down to an inviting family dinner in their cozy suburban house. Tico, their dog, provides a little humor and Dad, Mom and Grandma (Papá, Mamá and Abuelita in the Spanish text) round out the family circle. The contemporary Latino family eats tortillas, beans (frijoles), cheese, chile and green salad, and this meal provides the strongest hint to their ethnicity. As the meal progresses, the younger sister Tina exclaims over the abundance of food and shares her feeling of well-being, a sentiment echoed by everyone. The book is bilingual with very easy English and Spanish texts, sometimes placed on alternating pages of the double-paged spreads and sometimes printed together on the same page, a design decision that may annoy some who feel strongly about the structure of bilingual texts. The details of the watercolor pictures are nicely linked to the text, but the ever-smiling family members all share the same simplified facial features. Kids who know either English or Spanish can be introduced to this book and encouraged to try to learn some words or sentences in the unfamiliar language. This is the first in a new bilingual series for young children created by a major proponent of family literacy initiatives. (Picture book. 3-6)
