Spanglish, Bilingualism, Culture and Identity in Latino Children’s Literature

This paper examines the ways in which Latino children’s literature portrays cultural models of bilingualism and identity affiliations based on language and cultural practices. We focus attention the messages in seven children’s books about practices of and attitudes toward Spanglish, standard Spanish, and individual and societal bilingualism. In addition, we analyze how characters construct their cross-cultural identit(ies), based their language use and engagement in local and transnational cultural themes. Using assertions based on cultural model analyses, we show how portrayals evident in these books inform and are informed by larger cultural models of being bilingual and belonging to Latino bilingual communities in the U.S.