BHAS Has Published a Children’s Spanish-Language Bird book!
Kim Adelson
Several years ago, BHAS decided to spend some of our funds to provide Spanish-language children’s books about birds to our local libraries. To our great surprise, there were no educational books that featured North American birds available in Spanish: the few that had been written were all out of print. So, I decided to write one.
Writing the text was not difficult, but figuring out a way to create the illustrations was: the book features 25 birds that needed to be pleasant to view and (reasonably) accurately drawn. Enter AI, with its ability to convert text to pictures. The process involved multiple iterations, but eventually I was able to create the needed images.
The book is 40 pages long and it’s pitched for Pre-K through 3rd graders. Most of the book is in a question-and-answer format; there is a question on one page and then the answer follows on the next page. A majority of the pages feature birds, but a few of the pages show non-birds (e.g. bats, butterflies) for contrast. For example,
| Am I a bird? I fly at night. | Yes, I am a bird. Some birds, like owls and nightjars, are more active at night. |
| Are we birds? We live in a very large group! | Yes, we are birds. Some birds, like these Snow Geese, live in very large groups called “flocks”. |
This is followed by several pages in which basic facts about birds are reviewed. For example,
| Birds have beaks and feathers. | Birds like this Junco can be found in snow. |
The final two pages list the names of all the birds in the book (e.g. Song Sparrow on the cover).
The book would have been greatly delayed if it wasn’t for Sheila Rodriguez’ tireless work learning about the self-publishing process and finding us a printing company. Kudos to Sheila!
We have already arranged to provide 40 copies of the book to the Timberland Regional Libraries; in eBook form, it has been placed on the webpage of the State Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction so that it is freely available for teachers to use across the state. We are in the process of donating copies to local elementary school libraries.
We hope that access to this book will encourage an interest in birds in children that otherwise might not be able to read about them! You can’t start instilling a love of birds at too young an age!
