Training Day: El Toro and Friends (Family Comic Friday)

Spinning off from the very popular series ¡vamos! (Let's Go!) comes this bilingual graphic novel from Raul the Third!

El Toro is a very popular luchador (that's a masked wrestler who combats in lucha libre style wrestling. He's about to take on the world champ. But El Toro is just too lazy to train. Thankfully, he's got encouragement in the form of his trainer, Kooky Dooky.

I recently read and reviewed the all-ages graphic novel Lowriders to the Rescue. It was the amazing artwork by Raul the Third that I was a huge fan of. I am in awe of Mexican artwork. Especially sugar skulls. While Raul the Third doesn't seem to have added any of those signature dia del los muertos decorations in this book, it's that art style I became enamored with in my previous experience with Raul the Third which flourishes throughout every page..

Adding to the wonderment of the art is the brilliant color palette used. Mega kudos to Elaine Bay for making every page explode with color.

Training Day is a little bit silly. But it's also a little bit of a travel guide about Mexican culture. Plus it's a language lesson book as well. I love that Raul the Third first has the characters say phrases first in English and then follow up in Spanish. I've read a few bilingual comics that assume that the reader knows both Spanish and English. Here, the author allows readers to see how the two sentences might be saying the same thing. But  he also shows how the voice and sentence structure can change in translation.

Training Day was published in 2021. There's currently 4 books in the World of ¡vamos! series. I think with the most current release of Tacos Today in March, 2023, that's why my local library had this and the other 4 books in the series on the new shelf. 

Amazon recommends this book for readers ages 6-8. I think that's a perfect age group for this book. If you know of a child that speaks English as their primary language and they're about to start learning Spanish in grades 1-3, get them this book! If you have a young readers in which English is a second language, get them to this book. Forget the age suggestions. Books like this one can be a valuable tool helping integrate Spanish speaking students who are learning English into the multilingual integrated classroom. 

I hope that Raul the Third continues to produce important learning tools such as this one. I also hope parents, guardians and teachers will use these books to teach both English and Spanish. 

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 10 out of 10 stars.