Please Don't Go!

Get Ready for Gabi #4

by Marisa Montes, Joe Cepeda (Illustrations)

Move over Dora the Explorer. Out of the way Junie B. Gabí está aquí! A school and family-based Little Apple series with a funny, spunky Latina main character--a wonderful first for Scholastic!

It's so hard to say, ¡ADIOS! Gabi LOVES that her abuelita is visiting. But she knows that sooner or later Abuelita has to go back home to Puerto Rico...unless Gabi can think up a plan to make her stay. Gabi tries teaching Abuelita to speak English, signing them up for kickboxing classes, & helping out with chores. But the whispered plans between her parents & Abuelita don't stop. Gabi's going to have to come up with something better, something BIGGER, something more...risky. But Gabi can't think of everything. And she's about to get a GRANDE surprise she could never have seen coming...

128 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published June 1, 2004

Reviews

[N_stefanie Akwa · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was very unhappy with this book; the plot went nowhere. In brief, a young girl is upset that her grandmother is leaving to go back to Puerto Rico. Her teacher assigns her a partner in school that she dislikes and teases. One trick she plays on him backfires. She tells Johnny that she will teach him some Spanish phrases that will help him. As expected, she proceeds to teach him an insulting phrases. He ends up embarrasing not only himself but the whole class when the teacher asks him to use his Spanish to welcome their new guest. I found the book to be one-sided and the characters two-dimensional. The illustrations were simplistic cartoon drawings which showed no ethnicity.

The chapter titles were in Spanish and there was an excellent Spanish/ English glossary in the back of the book. I would only recommend this book for a bilingual English/Spanish class. It is a good way to introduce many Spanish vocabulary words in a non-threatening way to younger students.