The name Booksalo is a play on the phrase “búscalo” meaning look for it or look it up. I once had a Spanish tutor that made a huge difference in my Spanish language journey by lending me her copy of Relato de un Náufrago by Gabriel García Márquez. She told me to read every day and if I ran into a word I didn’t understand?, pues ¡búscalo! Look it up!

And that’s what I did. Every day I would dedicate 30 minutes to an hour reading my book aloud accompanied by an English/Spanish dictionary. At first, well, I didn’t understand a lot of the words so it would take me the entire hour to get through a page or two. But eventually, things changed. My brain changed. My mind opened.

The books I selected got longer, more abstract (I’ll never forget the time I tried reading a Spanish book in the magical realism genre before I was ready. It was a very, very confusing time.), and I improved in every area of the language — vocabulary, pronunciation, sentence structure, comprehension.

So, to all of you out there doing the work, I recommend that you always keep a novel to add to your language learning regime. A new language is a new world. I urge you to take in the stories written by and for native speakers of your target language to not only improve your language skills but also to develop a deeper sense of cultural awareness.

Sincerely,