Rafi and Rosi and Rafi and Rosi: Carnival are books set in the island of Puerto Rico. They are ‘I Can Read’ books. They are beginning to read books. And this is another instance where I saw a need, and I went ahead and came up with something that could fill that need because I thought that there was a need of a beginning to read books that would be for the Spanish speaker about characters that actually speak Spanish and that live in a place where Spanish is spoken.
And that is how these books were born. They were first published in English, and I did both the Spanish version and the English version. The characters are tree frogs, but not any kind of tree frog, they are coquí tree frogs.
And if you are from the island of Puerto Rico, you know how beautiful the coquí tree frog sings and how that song is the lullaby to which you actually sleep at night and how difficult it is to sleep here in the states when you move to the states and you no longer have the lullaby of el coquí .
So the books were set in the island of Puerto Rico, but they’re more about the relationship of a brother and a sister. And the Rafi is the older brother, the know-it-all brother. He knows everything about everything, and he loves to show off to his little sister, Rosi.
And Rosi is a very adoring little sister. She loves her older brother, but she has a mind of her own, and that’s what I really like about Rosi because sometimes she teaches lessons to Rafi, and the lessons are very good lessons.