Pico, the Pesky Parrot
A bilingual storybook for children 4-12 about friendship, patience, and compassion.
I wrote this story after a train ride when I watched an adorable Spanish boy trying to make friends with an other boy on the train. The children seemed to have fun trying to understand each other for a few minutes until the blond child was pulled away by his mother. "Don't talk to him, he doesn't speak English," she said. The little Spanish boy had a disappointed, sad expression on his face when his mother tried to console him close to tears.
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Erika M Szabo
When I decided to learn German, I signed up to take a language course. Well, it didn’t work for me. The instructor made us repeat words ten times as a chorus and ten minutes later none of us remembered the word or its meaning. It might have been that the dry and repetitive teaching method was too boring for me, or perhaps it was the fact that I always learned best at my own pace. As a result, I quit the course after just two lessons.
Later on, I came across fun looking picture books written in German for children. My daughter was a toddler, and she wanted to know what the story was about, so I grabbed a dictionary and started translating the words into Hungarian. After I translated a paragraph word for word, some of the sentences didn’t make sense. So, I rearranged the structure of the sentences to sound correctly in Hungarian, and then I compared it with the German paragraph. I grabbed a few words from each paragraph, wrote them down and looked up the words in the dictionary. Following this easy method, I learned the meaning of some of the words, how the words are used in a sentence and the plural of words. When we moved to the US, I used the same method to learn Basic English.
When I decided to learn German, I signed up to take a language course. Well, it didn’t work for me. The instructor made us repeat words ten times as a chorus and ten minutes later none of us remembered the word or its meaning. It might have been that the dry and repetitive teaching method was too boring for me, or perhaps it was the fact that I always learned best at my own pace. As a result, I quit the course after just two lessons.
Later on, I came across fun looking picture books written in German for children. My daughter was a toddler, and she wanted to know what the story was about, so I grabbed a dictionary and started translating the words into Hungarian. After I translated a paragraph word for word, some of the sentences didn’t make sense. So, I rearranged the structure of the sentences to sound correctly in Hungarian, and then I compared it with the German paragraph. I grabbed a few words from each paragraph, wrote them down and looked up the words in the dictionary. Following this easy method, I learned the meaning of some of the words, how the words are used in a sentence and the plural of words. When we moved to the US, I used the same method to learn Basic English.
Available in eBook and paperback
Sarah, Emma’s mom, promised to bird-sit Pico for two weeks but soon regrets her decision because the noisy parrot keeps screeching and squawking all day, annoying her family and the neighbors. When Pico makes a mess of Emma’s room, Emma gets very angry, but her friends help her. Charlotte notices that Pico seems sad, and Pedro finds out why Pico is shrieking so loudly all the time. The parrot is frustrated because nobody pays attention to him, and nobody understands what he wants.
The purpose of this English and Spanish bilingual book is to show children the beauty of another language and that learning a new language doesn’t have to be boring, it could be fun. The story also delivers a message that when we don’t take the time to listen to each other, we tend to judge others quickly before we get to know them.
Sarah, la mamá de Emma, prometió cuidar de Pico durante dos semanas pero pronto se arrepiente de su decisión porque el ruidoso loro se pasa todo el día parloteando y chillando, molestando a su familia y vecinos. Cuando Pico desordena la habitación de Emma, ella se enfada mucho pero sus amigos la ayudan. Charlotte se da cuenta de que Pico parece triste y Pedro averigua porqué Pico está chillando tan alto todo el tiempo. El pájaro está frustrado porque nadie sabe lo que quiere ni le presta atención.
La propuesta de este libro bilingüe inglés y español es mostrar a los niños la belleza de otra lengua y que aprender un nuevo idioma no tiene que ser aburrido, y puede ser divertido. La historia también transmite el mensaje de que cuando no nos tomamos tiempo para escucharnos los unos a los otros, tendemos a juzgar rápidamente antes de llegar a conocernos.
The purpose of this English and Spanish bilingual book is to show children the beauty of another language and that learning a new language doesn’t have to be boring, it could be fun. The story also delivers a message that when we don’t take the time to listen to each other, we tend to judge others quickly before we get to know them.
Sarah, la mamá de Emma, prometió cuidar de Pico durante dos semanas pero pronto se arrepiente de su decisión porque el ruidoso loro se pasa todo el día parloteando y chillando, molestando a su familia y vecinos. Cuando Pico desordena la habitación de Emma, ella se enfada mucho pero sus amigos la ayudan. Charlotte se da cuenta de que Pico parece triste y Pedro averigua porqué Pico está chillando tan alto todo el tiempo. El pájaro está frustrado porque nadie sabe lo que quiere ni le presta atención.
La propuesta de este libro bilingüe inglés y español es mostrar a los niños la belleza de otra lengua y que aprender un nuevo idioma no tiene que ser aburrido, y puede ser divertido. La historia también transmite el mensaje de que cuando no nos tomamos tiempo para escucharnos los unos a los otros, tendemos a juzgar rápidamente antes de llegar a conocernos.
Pages from the book
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