Mango, Abuela, and Me -- Book Review & Craft

Disclosure: Candlewick Press gave me a copy of this book free of charge to review. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation. As in all my reviews I am providing links for your ease, but receive no compensation.

What happens when a faraway grandmother comes to live with you and share your room? And what if she does not speak the same language as you? How are you going to get to know her? This is the storyline of Mango, Abuela, and Me by Meg Medina and illustrated by Angela Dominguez. 

Mia's grandmother comes to live with her family from a Hispanic country. Her abuela misses the parrots that lived in the tree behind her house. She has brought a feather from one with her as well as a photograph. They have to share a room, but unfortunately Abuela does not know English and Mia barely knows Spanish. The days seem long without being able to communicate too much, until Mia's mother reminds her of how her class helped her best friend learn English when she first moved here. Then Abuela and Mia practice words in both English and Spanish. Then Mia brings home a gift from the pet store for Abuela--a parrot. They name the parrot Mango. Mango begins to learn the words in both languages as well. This book has such important family values in it as well as some basic Spanish words. (It is also available in Spanish.) It is such a sweet story that we really enjoyed. To go with the book we decided to make a parrot craft. We used the pattern found on Ideas4Kids. Instead of making it as a bookmark we made a Mango puppet and changed the colors. We used craft foam instead of paper as well.

Hazel couldn't wait to play with him. Unfortunately she wouldn't stay still long enough for me to get a decent picture of her with the puppet.

We tried to make our puppet in the colors of Mango. Here are some more parrot crafts and activities from other Kid Blogger Network Blogs:

1) From Discovering the World Through My Son's Eyes: The Parrot Club
2) From All Done Monkey: The Parrot Tico Tango
3) From Brain Power Boy: 3 Pirate Perler Bead Patterns to Make

I hope you will check out this fun multicultural children's book!