The Story Behind Binibi: A Bilingual Children’s Book Brand
In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, we want to shed light on the story behind Binibi, a bilingual book brand designed to support Spanish learning at home, that was created by two Hispanic moms.
Ana Sofia Guzman and Luciana Yarhi grew up in El Salvador where they were fortunate enough to be raised bilingual, with Spanish as a first language and English as their second. This opened up enormous opportunities for them, including going to college in the U.S., where they started their careers. They founded Binibi in 2020 after their first kids were born.
Ana and Luciana knew early on that they wanted their children to be bilingual and like many parents, they turned to books and quickly found that the availability of quality bilingual books or resources in Spanish was very limited. As they tried different things, they realized their kids loved books that were interactive and had sounds. That’s when they came up with the idea to combine the books their kids loved with the audio that they wanted them to hear to facilitate learning a second language.
Binibi, a play on the words “bilingual niño”, was created to provide parents with a fun and easy way to speak Spanish with their children, from their earliest days. The audio in the books is stimulating for babies and provides them with a language input at an age when their brain is most absorbent and ripe for language development. Binibi seeks to fill the gap in the availability of dual-language products for children and to support parents everywhere on their bilingual parenting journey.
All of their books feature sounds and songs on every page, beautiful illustrations and text in English and Spanish so parents can easily follow along. Over the past few years, they’ve been featured on our site, making their way into many of our customer’s homes and helping bilingual families introduce a second language in an exciting way. Through their various guest blogs, they’ve also been able to guide parents in their bilingualism journeys with tips, activities, Spanish translations and valuable information that empowers parents to raise bilingual children.
Currently, Binibi’s collection consists of nine titles that combine sound books and musical books, three of which just launched! Their new musical collection teaches children early educational concepts including numbers, colors and opposite words through the use of catchy, original songs. They take place in day-to-day settings to make language learning relatable to everyday life and facilitate practicing new words. In the creation of their books, Binibi works exclusively with Salvadoran artists, including their illustrator, musicians and photographers. In their mission to keep Hispanic culture alive and motivate families to put in the effort to keep their Hispanic roots strong at home, they’ll continue to release products that showcase and honor incredible Hispanic talent.
You can find Binibi’s bilingual books for kids on our website! If you’re a bilingual family looking to introduce Spanish to your children, possibly not knowing where to start, Binibi’s books are an incredible tool to guide you in this journey and get your child excited about learning a new language!
