Tag Team (El Toro and Friends)

Product Description

Luchadores El Toro and La Oink Oink are the perfect tag team as they clean up together in this playful and visually stunning early reader! Perfect for fans of Elephant and Piggie, comic book fans, and kids looking to practice both Spanish and English.

After last night’s match, the stadium is a mess! There is so much work to be done and Mexican wrestling star El Toro feels overwhelmed. Enter . . . La Oink Oink!

With the collaborative spirit they have in the ring, El Toro and La Oink Oink tackle the cleaning up together. La Oink Oink sweeps and El Toro picks up the trash.  La Oink Oink washes the dishes, and El Toro dries them.  Together, an insurmountable mountain of chores becomes a series of fun tasks for these two wrestling friends!

With unique and detailed illustrations, and easy Spanish and English vocabulary words, sports fans and comic book fans alike will fall in love with El Toro, La Oink Oink, and their tag-team adventures in this fun early reader.

From School Library Journal

K-Gr 2—Following their debut in Training Day, wrestling partners El Toro and La Oink Oink are back, and cleaning up has never been so much fun. They won their match the previous evening against Donny Dollars and Bald Aguila at El Coliseo and today, El Toro arrives at the arena to put it in order. When he finds the place in complete disarray, he calls on his tag team friend to help him out. Together they clean up the many messes in record time and have fun along the way. There are two reasons for this: one is sharing the duties and the other is playing music. “Mi mama would always listen to music when she cleaned,” says El Toro. Just as they do in the wrestling ring, the duo works together to defeat the disorder. A great new entry in “El Toro and Friends,” which pays tribute to Mexican Americans and includes Spanish words along with their translation in an easy reading format. VERDICT The colorful, action-packed cartoon illustrations create a comic book geared toward a young audience who will get a kick out of following the two teammates and their cooperative efforts both inside and outside the wrestling ring.—Maryann H. Owen, Oak Creek P.L., WI

Review

★ “In typical ¡Vamos! style, a vibrant world bursts to life on every page, filled with movement and a detailed host of cartoon characters, though text and images are simplified to accommodate beginning readers. Raúl offers a lesson in visual literacy, utilizing speech bubbles and panels in addition to traditional narration.” —
Booklist, STARRED review

★ “A generous touch of giddy surrealism continues to make Raúl the Third’s faunal milieu a destination, lovingly detailed in frenetic compositions and Bay’s SweeTart-hued digital colorization. Exercise and toilet cleaning are rarely this much fun.” —
The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, STARRED review

★ “Simple sentences and recognizable—yet entirely fresh and original—plot structures set up young readers for accomplishment. Visual and linguistic whirls and twirls match the fast-paced tempo of lucha libre, serving up dazzling Chicano English….This pizzazz echoes throughout the chillante palette of matte violet, teal, and orange hues, animating the dynamic motion lines in comic-book-style drawings, rewarding attentive eyes and ears with endless detail and inside jokes.”—
The Horn Book, STARRED review

“As in the World of ¡Vamos! books, the creator, alongside colorist Elaine Bay, utilizes comics-style layouts and an eye-catching, lightly faded color palette…. lively banter and humorous illustrations make for an absorbing early reader.” —
Publishers Weekly

“The unstoppable Raúl the Third brings his border barrio to rip-roaring life with plenty of humor, embedded Spanish, and Chicano cultural references…. Comic-book and lucha libre fans alike will not tap out of this semibilingual smackdown.”—
Kirkus

About the Author

Raúl the Third is the Pura Belpré Award-winning author-illustrator of 
¡Va