ows are the most extraordinary animals on Earth. We eat them with potatoes on the side, they look pretty in a field and they are the source of inspiration for artists and poets. In Spanish, one of the cow's stomachs is called, libro, the same word for book, and we should not be surprised, because books are the second most extraordinary animals on Earth. We spill sauce on them, they look pretty on the shelf and it is through them that we regularly find out what poets and artists are up to.

A cow is a ruminant: it swallows its food in order to bring it back up to the mouth to be chewed calmly. That is exactly how books should be read: returning to them on different occasions and chewing them thoroughly for a pleasant digestion.

César Fernández Arias

Children learn from books, but they also learn from stones, flies, ants and spiders. They learn from anything and everything. They learn when they play. And they never tire from learning. Which is why it is so absurd that there should be boring books, and that one should waste one's time with them instead of lending one's close attention to a dung beetle on the sidewalk. Some of the most boring books are done by people who think like tailors and believe that children's books should be like children's suits: smaller by several sizes. A child's innocent gaze has nothing to do with the size of pants. So what if not everything is easy to understand? Few adults can tell you why aeroplanes are able to fly, and they are still widely used for travel.

With the exception of those made to turn us into zombies, each book contains a piece of a treasure map (at least that was the case in the past). There is a well-kept secret we will only be able to decipher once we have all the pieces. Sometimes, one takes one's time. There is nothing strange about starting to read at age seven and realise that one is still holding the same book in one's hands at age seventy-seven.

The books in both series: Libros para niños and Últimas lecturas, share the
same technical characteristics: each is printed in bi-colour, they have the same format
-18,5 x 23 cm.-, on 140 gr. paper, hardback with a dust jacket.
The price of each depending on the number of pages (usually between 100 and 200) and the print
run (from 2.000 to 3.000 copies)- varies between 15 and 35 Euros.