Los Espantapájaros

Children's Literature - Patrick Hunter

This half-hearted effort effort in bilingual nonfiction describes one of the decorative and useful staples of the fall season, the Scarecrow. Harris starts out strong, describing their purpose as decorations and objects to scare birds away from fields as well as their forms as persons, but then falls flat in providing more description than that. Two pages in the book describe what scarecrows wear on their feet and their "pumpkin heads," a description that could have been expanded upon for more reader appeal. Although lacking here and in some other areas, overall Harris does a better job here with the subject matter than he did in La cosecha de manzanas/Apple Harvest. This book's purpose seems to be both teaching bilingual skills and the differences between Spanish and English as well as providing some information on the subject matter. A glossary, index and table of contents are included both in English and in Spanish. Text is easy to read, and with the pages containing the English on top and the Spanish on bottom, it is easy to compare both languages. Where this comparison fails a bit is in the glossary. Terms are not highlighted in the text and are presented in the glossary alphabetically with respect to their language rather than corresponding directly to the similar term on the opposite page. Web resources are accessed through the FactHound Web portal, which "fetches" further Web sites. The sites returned are general to the season of fall rather than specific to the subject matter at hand. Still, Harris does create a decent resource for those who are looking for bilingual Spanish/English books for their library or classroom. The fact that the subject matter is an unusual one for the season discussed is also a plus in this "Todo acerca del otono/All About Fall" series entry. Reviewer: Patrick Hunter