What a Tantrum! Vaya Rabieta!

What a Tantrum! / Vaya rabieta! by Mireille d'Allance
Illustrated by Mireille d'Allance
Originally published in 2000 in French as Grosse colere
2004

     Roberto has had a bad day.  He has lost his tennis match, broken his racket and is walking inside his house with tons of mud in his shoes.  When his father asks him to take off his tennis shoes, he kicks them off as hard as he can.  And when he finds out there's spinach for dinner, he's had enough! "Are you kidding?"  His father sends him to his room to calm down.  But upstairs, Roberto's anger builds up, until a red monster comes out of his mouth and starts destroying everything in his room. When the red monster ends up breaking one of his favorite toys, Roberto tries to stop it.  While cleaning up the mess the "monster" had done, Roberto realizes he has calmed down and he's ready to go back downstairs to have dinner with his dad.
     The idea of Roberto's anger spilling out and becoming  monster is very interesting.  I can see the story working as a way to approach and talk about anger with younger kids.  The bilingual edition of What a Tantrum! / Vaya rabieta! flows very well.  I find sometimes that bilingual editions are a bit choppy and awkward, but I felt that both English and Spanish versions of the story seemed "natural".  I'm interested in finding other bilingual editions like this one, where the goal is to tell the story in both languages -not to try to teach vocabulary like most bilingual books I've read.