If you're traveling to a Spanish-speaking country and your kids want to give the language a try, there may be no better book to give them than the "Way-Cool Spanish Phrase Book" by Jane Wightwick and Wina Gunn.

Although the reading vocabulary and pronunciation helps might be too advanced for most children much younger than 8, and children much older than 13 or so may find the book trying too hard to be cool, children in the target audience are likely to enjoy using this book in their attempt to sound like the natives. While upcoming travel is the most likely motive for buying a book like this, youngsters who enjoy word play or are taking an introductory Spanish course will enjoy this as well.

The 96-page paperback typically features from half a dozen to a dozen words per page, each accompanied by a simple cartoon in shades of black and orange (that's not early as ugly as it sounds). Also included are various cultural notes (example: "In Spain, you don't play 'leap frog,' you play 'foal.'") and some mildly irrelevant comments toward parents and teachers (but nothing parents will find offensive if they have a sense of humor).

Like most phrasebooks, this book makes no attempt at teaching grammar. And other than some pages devoted to the numbers and the months and days of the week, there's no systematic teaching of vocabulary either.

Instead, the book teaches the things that kids are likely to want to say (OK, not everything; there are no dirty words here). You'll find everything from "when's your birthday?" to "Let's hit the beach!" to "I've lost my parents." The final page is a cheat sheet with the most basic of the basics, such as "hello" and "thank you."

Obviously, no book this size is going to contain everything. But this book does have a selection that kids will enjoy. In terms of vocabulary, its main drawback is that there are a few cases where regionalisms aren't taken into account, but such a shortcoming is probably inevitable for a small book. My main criticism is that the pronunciation guides (such as "koomplay-anyos failees" for cumpleaños feliz) don't indicate which syllable gets the stress.

That quibble aside, this is a book that will do as much as any book can to get its target audience to actually try using the language.