Berto y sus buenas ideas (Spanish Edition)

Anyone looking for a great place to start reading real Spanish should pick up the tiny but highly entertaining "Berto y sus buenas ideas." Not only is it funny, it also offers beginning Spanish learners the opportunity to read an actual story. This story only spans about 20 pages and uses very basic grammar and vocabulary. Word lists fill the remainder of the book. The grammar remains in the very simple present tense until the story's final chapter, in which fairly simple preterite conjugations appear. For the most part, anyone who has completed a basic Spanish course should have no trouble reading this book. Not only that, it provides the entryway to an entire series of easy Spanish readers which gradually increase in difficulty. This book's follow-up, "Pobre Ana," introduces Level 1 of the currently 3 level series.Simple grammar and simple language often don't make for compelling or interesting stories. "Berto" solves this problem with humor. Berto has an enormous ego. He thinks he's smarter than Einstein and "màs guapo" than Brad Pitt. He thinks he has far better things to do than attend school and do homework. So he comes up with "buenas ideas" to avoid both. He takes on David Beckham, then tries going to the museum, but his feet get tired. Then he and is friend Paquita go to a pasterlería, where he eats countless pastries and pays the ultimate price. He fares no better in a park where a frog jumps onto his face. Following these ordeals, school doesn't seem so bad. Yes, the story also has a moral. The author somehow managed to pull together a very funny and entertaining story with very limited language. It has a "Calvin and Hobbes" type of mischevious humor and rewards repeated readings. The only complaint, and not a big one, is that the book contains two vocabularly lists, one for each chapter, the "Glosario por Capítulos," and one for the entire book, the "Glosario Completo." Not all of the words seem to appear in the complete glossary, so if something doesn't appear there, check the chapter glossaries. Apart from that very minor flaw, the book probably stands as one of the best first Spanish readers currently available.

The book arrived in good condition. It arrived within the time frame promised, but that was pretty slow.

I teach both Spanish and French and I use both versions of this novel in my level one classes. This book will elicit reactions from your students and still be comprehensible. My high school students enjoy reading about Berto's adventures and larger than life personality. I appreciate that the author infuses culture by having Berto go to real places in Spain that we can research and discuss as a class. The repetitive vocabulary and the provided Spanish-English glossary will make this book a successful read for beginning Spanish learners without boredom. We can discuss Berto's personality, his perception vs reality, where we would go on our own adventures in our city, make predictions about the ending etc. My students have said that they can't believe they are reading something and understanding it so readily after just a semester of Spanish. I'm very excited that now they want to read MORE novels and see reading as a reward, not a chore, and as something that they are very capable of right from the start of our Spanish program.