How Are You?/¿Cómo estás?

The two giraffes from How Do You Say? / ¿Cómo se dice? (rev. 9/16) are back in this high-energy bilingual book about identifying emotions and making a new friend; here, Dominguez ups the ante by introducing phrases (as opposed to single words). The giraffes ask an ostrich, "How are you? / ¿Cómo estás?" Before the ostrich can give them an answer, the overeager giraffes try to guess what the ostrich is feeling. "Are you hungry? /¿Tienes hambre?...Annoyed? / ¿Irritada?" The giraffes act out each feeling to comedic effect, but the ostrich always replies, "No." Finally, the ostrich announces: "I'm excited...because I have new amigos!" The digitally colorized pencil and tissue paper illustrations place the emphasis on the giraffes' exaggerated facial expressions and goofy antics, while allowing the boldly colored text to pop against clean white backgrounds. While the majority of the book follows the English-to-Spanish bilingual model, the placement of the type doesn't insist that we read it that way, giving readers the pleasant task of choosing which language to read first. julie hakim azzam