One girl, a magic box, seven missing crystals. Tonia Patagonia is orphaned and alone in the world. Her only legacy is a magical box that holds her family’s unique treasure. There’s just one problem: the box won’t open. To unlock it, Tonia has to find seven crystals hidden across South America. She’s determined. She’s Tonia Patagonia, after all. And she’s never cold, hot, thirsty, hungry, sleepy… or scared! She sets off on a wild adventure through Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela. But as she goes from one scary surprise to the next, she finds out that the real treasure isn’t gold or jewels. It’s something far more powerful and nothing like she expected. Because the most important things in life aren’t things.

Specifications

• 84 word families and 65 cognates
• 91 pages of text
• written in present tense
• neutral Spanish
• contains a Spanish-English glossary, and two pages about special words
• setting: Latin-America

Information for teachers

Tonia Patagonia explores important, feel-good themes. The narrative gently encourages reflection on what makes us truly rich: love, family, and friendship.

The book includes more than 45 full-page colour illustrations by Chilean artist Ignacio Antonio Vergara Fuentealba. Colour is a key element of the story. Each chapter connects one country, one crystal, and one colour, so the illustrations do more than support comprehension, they anchor meaning. The reader sees the scene, follows the action, and connects language with visual cues. The vivid, expressive artwork brings characters and settings to life and helps readers build a picture in the mind while staying grounded in the Spanish text. 

Students meet numbers and colours in context, along with essential spatial expressions like EN, ARRIBA, ABAJO, DETRÁS, DENTRO. They follow Tonia’s path across a political map of the Andes, learning the geography of Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela.

The story uses the most common Spanish verbs in the present tense: HAY, ES, ESTÁ, TIENE, QUIERE, VE, MIRA, DICE, VA, ESCUCHA, PIENSA, AGARRA. It also builds all the key expressions with TENER: TENER FRÍO, TENER CALOR, TENER HAMBRE, TENER SED, TENER MIEDO, TENER SUEÑO, TENER PACIENCIA.

All through the book, students get playful practice with the Spanish rr, in words that invite them to roll the sound again and again, like ¡Qué rabia! ¡Qué rrrrrabia! and all the ‘REQUETE” words: Requetecaliente, Requetefrío, Requetetriste and ¡Requeterrequetefeliz!

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Would you like to order a class set? We will give you a 10% discount on 25 or more copies of the same title. Please, order the novels via e-mail. Due to relatively small stock numbers, please allow 2-3 weeks for your order.

*All books and novels are copyright protected, which means that copying this book for use in your classroom is not permitted.