Manana, Iguana!

Manana, Iguana

Written by Ann Whitford Paul

Illustrated by Ethan Long

Scholastic Inc., 2004

30 Pages

Multicultural (Spanish) 

            This is the story of Iguana. When all of her friends decide that they are too fast, too slow, or don’t have arms to help her get ready for the fiesta until manana, Iguana has to do it all on her own! She gets mad at her friends and doesn’t invite them to her fiesta. They feel bad for always putting off Iguana until manana so they clean up the mess from the fiesta so she will have a clean house manana. Then Iguana shares the leftovers from Sabado on Domingo with her friends. This book teaches students all of the days of the week in Spanish, as well as other phrases, such as, “Not I!” This book perfectly blends English and Spanish together to create a book that teaches students much more than another language! 

            Long creates his illustrations with watercolor and gouache on watercolor paper. Though it is watercolor, many illustrations look like it could be color pencils or pastels. I love the use of color in this book, the setting, of course, is in the desert; Long uses reds, oranges, yellows and other warm colors to reflect the heat of the desert. Even the sun looks like the heat is radiating from it. The book uses single page and double page illustrations as well as vignettes. This book features informal text placement. 

            This book would be great when wanting to incorporate Spanish into the curriculum for your students. I think it would be especially important to incorporate the language if there are students in the classroom who speak Spanish. That would be a great way to make them feel accepted. This could also be a good book to use when talking about the right and wrong way to treat your friends.  Students could write a story incorporating the Spanish days of the week. If there is a Spanish speaking EL student in the classroom, you could take the opportunity to let the student teach the class simple words or phrases in Spanish.