This book is laborious, overwritten and poor quality. It is as if the author is trying to demonstrate how many words one can fit into a sentence. For insight into Otters, at a child's reading level, choose a different book.

Otter On His Own: The Story Of A Sea Otter is a children's story by Doe Boyle about a young otter growing up in the natural world. From learning how to eat sea urchins to exploring the underwater cove near where he was born and the world beyond, Otter On His Own is a scientifically accurate, highly enjoyable tale. Simple yet inspiring color illustrations by Robert Lawson add depth to the watery world of the otter pup.

The written part of this book is not terribly interesting, but the data, which occupy the bulk of its pages are on very interesting topics and appear to be very carefully put together. Their summary indices should be ignored since they seem to be derived in some ad hoc fashion rather than by factor analysis or other systematic index construction technique. I expect to be using the material in multi-level analyses on a variety of topics. It is a book to dip into again and again. Ideally, it should come with a cd-rom presenting the data in some readily searchable format. Perhaps in the next edition?

Hay dos ediciones de este libro en castellano y ninguna ha sido editada correctamente. En ambas, aparece la frase: "Su madre, quien era una vaca". Los animales no pueden recibir el tratamiento de "quien". Frases como: flotaban las banderas, en simple quietud, exactamente el único, en fin vino el toro, no son correctas en castellano. El verbo topetar está mal conjugado. Debería decirse Él topetea y no Él topeta. En el libro ISBN 0-14-054253-1 hay palabras mal partidas, como Bander-illeros. li-stones, par-alizado, etc. Al libro ISBN 0-590-44701-7 le faltan tildes en la portada, en las palabras traducción e inglés. (Por lo menos esta última versión cambió las palabras en las ilustraciones y las puso en castellano)

I highly recommend this book in any language! Ferdinand the Bull is a wonderful story with comical illustrations. The translated version that I have in castellano is well done. I use the story with my ninth grade Spanish classes mostly to demonstrate the use of the Imperfect and Preterite tenses. The book gives some excellent examples and is jampacked with vocabulary and cultural information. There is only one missing accent mark in the version I own and some "leismo"(common in Spain)which is the use of the indirect object pronoun "le" in place of a direct object pronoun.

I used this book, en español, in my first grade class room that I volunteer in, with the bilingual and spanish speaking children. It was the first time that they had books read to them in their native language in school, the first time they had their native tongue recognized as an academic thing, and it helped to build their self esteem in learning to read and write spanish. I also have a friend who owns this book in Norwegan... I highly recommend it, in any language.