Sueñan, lloran, cantan / They Dream, They Cry, They Sing: Poems for Children from Spain & Spanish America

The title of this delightful anthology is taken from "Balada de los dos abuelos" / "Ballad of my Two Grandfathers" by Nicolás Guillén of Cuba. The translator and editor, Perry Higman, has gathered an offering of poems from the Hispanic tradition which spans four centuries and two continents, from the anonymous fifteenth-century "El conde Arnolados" / "Romance of Count Arnaldos" from Spain to the poems of Alfonsina Storni of Argentina.

Alberti, Lorca, Lope De Vega, Machado, Góngora, Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda are among the fifteen poets represented. The poems for this bilingual edition have been selected for their widely diversified subjects and forms; children will be drawn to the unsentimental treatment of the subjects—the plight of the Moor Abenámar in the court of King don Juan, the lullabies and play-songs of Nobel Laureate Gabriela Mistral of Chile, and the mythic Condor and Heron of Pablo Neruda (who but he could have written "Oda a los calcetines" / "Ode to Some Socks"?!).

For parents who wish to please and instruct their children with examples of both Spanish and English poems which engage their senses and their imaginations and extend their understanding of both languages, this anthology will invite them not only to make it a reward or a gift, but to participate in the excitement and wonder of the word-play in both languages which these poems offer.