It's Kiki el Mono's birthday. There are balloons, a banana cake with four little candles, and his friends Trici, Capi and Tuca at the door.
And then there's the present: a big rainbow ball.
"It's mine! It's all mine!"
The lesson inside
Anyone who has been to a toddler's birthday party knows this moment. Kiki el Mono bounces the ball on his own while Capi, a little capybara, sits on a log and waits.
Then Kiki el Mono remembers Trici, back in the land of the dinosaurs, sitting by herself because nobody would let her play. And Capi is feeling that now, too.
So he walks over and holds out the ball: "You first, then me!" By the end of the book, you first, then me is the whole party's favorite sound, and it's how he hands out the cake.
Capi is a capybara, the largest rodent in the world and famously easygoing, which is why he waits so patiently.
Trici comes back from the first book, but this one reads fine on its own. Both editions (English on top or Spanish on top) are on the Kiki el Mono page. Here's where the little monkey comes from.
Five words worth learning yourself
- cumpleaños (koom-pleh-AH-nyohs), birthday
- pastel (pahs-TEHL), cake
- globo (GLOH-boh), balloon
- regalo (reh-GAH-loh), present
- compartir (kohm-pahr-TEER), to share
Cumpleaños is built from cumplir, to complete, and años, years. A birthday is the day you complete another year.
A small experiment for this week
Use primero... luego... (first... then...) three times this week, about anything. Primero el café, luego el correo. First coffee, then email.
With a little one, make it a game: take turns turning the pages, and say primero tú, luego yo every time. If you're on your own, the free book is a good place to find more of these small, useful frames.
¡Sigue adelante!
Ariel