Guest post by a literary agent, professional translator, online book reviewer, and Latino children's book expert
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| Adriana Dominguez |
English is not my first language, though this statement doesn’t ring quite as true now that I have spent most of my life living in the United States, speaking and working in English. But the fact is, when I arrived in the US at age 12, I did not speak a single word of it. I quickly learned to say the phrase “I don’t speak English” so fluidly, that folks often seemed to question the legitimacy of my assertion. Learning a language anytime after the age of twelve is difficult—as difficult as it is to be twelve in the first place! And so I believe that my fascination with reading and language emanates first from the fact that my mother read to me constantly from a very early age, and secondly, that I mostly developed my English language skills by reading lots and lots of books, often with a dictionary on hand to prevent me from getting “stuck” when I came across a term or phrase I did not understand.
