Stories from Spain/Historias de Espana, Second Edition (Side by Side Bilingual Books)

This book and it's companion, Stories From Latin America, are both effective reading practice for the advanced beginner or intermediate student. The stories are very short, which can be an advantage for the struggling beginner, and only mildly interesting in themselves. Don't expect great literature here.My only real complaint is that often the translations are too broad. As an example, consider the following pair of sentences:"Prudencia quedó muy sorprendido" and the translation, "Prudencia was very surprised". The problem is that "quedó" here means became or came to be, not was, which would be estuvo or estaba. This would send the reader to a dictionary to look up this particular meaning of quedar, which is what a bilingual book is supposed to prevent in the first place. There are many other examples.Still, not a bad book and an effective learning tool.

I love this series of books because it is one of the few I can find with English and Spanish side by side. It saves trips to the dictionary for language learners, and this allows more uninterrupted reading time. The content (brief legends of dubious provenance) is a little silly, but they are bite-sized and entertaining, so no single story takes a large investment of time. Appropriate for all ages.

This is a great concept to help one translate from English to Spanish. It eliminates the need for a dictionary and you zip right along from one short story to the next.This particular book covers a bit of history and legends from Spain. So not only will you get to improve your Spanish but you'll learn a little bit about their culture and history. That's a double win.The stories are short and you can whiz through them in about ten minutes, give or take. I will plan to buy more of these types of books in the future.Highly recommended for the intermediate user.

Book came quick and in great condition.

These are very easy to read short stories. I have (all?) four in the series, stories from Spain, Mexico, Puerto RIco and Latin America. I am also reading some more difficult material but find these stories a nice way to keep reminding myself of the word order and sentence structure through conversational and written Spanish, which is best learned through practice. It is nice to have the English translation on the opposite side and the glossery/dictionary of words in the back of the books.

I agree with C.A. Smith's review of this book. It is the same with the other 3 books by the same company. But overall, they are great books. I found the stories from Spain are much easier to understand in Spanish than the stories from Latin America. If you are trying to improve your Spanish, read the stories from Spain first or from Mexico then try to read the ones from Latin America and Puerto Rico.

This is an excellent book, which came in perfect shape, if you are trying to learn to read and speak spanish

I was so glad to find this and the other 2 books like it for my class. I hope the students can use it well and not just lean on the translations already being there.

I really loved these very charming legends! I've now been teaching myself Spanish, using the Duolingo and Memrise programmes, for about 10 months and so much appreciate having found this set of about 20 legends from many districts and cities in Spain. This is a dual language book, but I found it was best to cover the English translation and only read it when I had finished the Spanish. Inevitably I had mistranslated a few words but that usually didn't matter at all and somehow realizing the correct meaning afterwards, cemented the words in my memory.

I am only beginning Spanish but I find that because the translation is side by side on the next page, it is a very easy and enjoyable way to pick up vocabulary and understand sentence structure. There are recordings of some of the stories online. These are great to listen to while reading along.

I attach importance to listening to a new language as well as reading it. I chose this book for the audio content that was promoted. However I have not been able to download it: very disappointing.

Good book. Not for beginners to Spanish, but wins on two counts for others. The stories themselves are excellent, drawn from some of the top Spanish masters of the genre, but also with the English translation on the facing page, some of the more challenging Spanish is not a problem. Good book for those learning Spanish who want to venture into more interesting and varied language than usually encountered in language textbooks.

Nice stories, the novelty of having the Spanish translation next to the English version is interesting and helpful if you are interested in learning either languages.