So, ok, I wanted to start this business. I had big dreams of a subscription service that would bring curated and VERY carefully chosen Spanish books to bilingual families every month, along with other book-themed items that would celebrate all of the different cultures and traditions under the Latinx umbrella.

I also had zero idea of how to start a business.

You know how there are some people that are seriously entrepreneurial? I… was not one of those people. I LIKED working for someone else.

But in this case it felt like I was being pushed to do something I was highly uncomfortable doing, and one of the biggest reasons I felt that way was that the audition for Univision Arizona’s “Véndeme tu sueño” contest was just a few weeks away. “It’s a sign!” I said to my husband.

And so, armed with only a piece of paper that roughly outlined my business plan, I sallied forth to convince the judges that I deserved one of the few spots in this Shark-Tank style competition.

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When my daughter Leila was born, my husband and I agreed that it was very important for us that she speak Spanish. I grew up in Mexico, and my husband’s Ecuadorian family speaks Spanish in their home in NJ. We had both seen all too often how family ties often suffered when family members struggled to communicate with each other across language barriers. I have my own parents to thank for a bilingual and bicultural upbringing that allows me to seamlessly jump from Spanish to English to (let’s be honest) Spanglish, and I desperately wanted to provide the same for my kids.

As a huge reader, one of the first things I did when I found out I was pregnant was look for books for my unborn bebé. I’m sure the experienced parents invited to our book-themed baby shower had a good eye-roll when we asked them to forgo onesies and diapers in favor of Spanish children’s books.

However, despite my best efforts to keep on top of finding new books, by the time Leila was a year old, I had memorized most of the books in our personal library and pretty much exhausted our library’s selection of Spanish children’s books. Having been disappointed one too many times by books that looked promising but then turned out to have weird/lame story lines or (all too often) seriously sub-par translations, I desperately wished someone would just hand me a stack of curated Spanish children’s books every so often.

And then one night, after reading “¿Eres mi mamá?” for the 4 millionth time, it finally hit me: I should be that someone. How many parents were in the same boat as me? Committed to raising bilingual babies but too busy to obsessively read Amazon book reviews (ahem…) and in need of a little extra support to raise bilingual readers.

And that, queridísimo lector, is how the tiny glimmer of an idea that became Sol Book Box was born.

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