Here’s a book you can get for $4 on Amazon that is great for at least two things–imperfect vs. pret (which we call aba/ía verbs and sudden past verbs in my class), and subjunctive influence (which we call verbs that show something’s influencing them): La Gallinita Roja. It’s bilingual on Amazon, I think, but mine is monolingual–I dislike bilingual books in my classroom.
The past verb switch is beautiful–this is the way things always were, then “one morning…” and it’s preterite from then on.
There’s no subjunctive for influence in the book, but after I read the book to the class (with lots of motions and questions, of course), they made a six-frame comic strip, choosing 6 of the 9 things the red hen did or didn’t want the friends to do. They had to put them in order and illustrate them lightly so I would know they knew the meaning. In each frame, the hen had to say “Quiero que…” or “Necesito que…” or something similar that they’ve had in their vocab recently, and then change the verb accordingly.
