Miralejos
Miralejos is a resource center for teachers and learners of Spanish, committed to creating quality materials that spur the imagination, encourage collaboration, and are culturally accurate. We're here to help you learn Spanish, and teach Spanish.
Created by a native Spanish speaker with over a decade of teaching experience, our focus is on materials that supplement any Spanish curriculum, with little planning on your side. Our main product is the Ratón book series. Games and other classroom materials will follow soon.
Beyond helping teach the language, part of our goal is to introduce readers to different aspects of Mexican daily life. Culture is portrayed in a genuine and positive way and to this end, all media and text with a cultural component is carefully chosen to reflect a variety of real places, objects, and food in Mexico. Yes, our materials avoid the overused and limited imagery too frequently found in many of the materials for Spanish learners today, not to mention other media like films, shows, and marketing.
Spanish is a beautiful, intricate, versatile, abstract language - in other words, it is an art. This makes teaching Spanish itself an art. That is our mission - to teach Spanish and help speakers appreciate it for the beautiful language it is.
Illustration by Sol Gutiérrez-Lara
The Founder
Susanna Lara Roth, founder of Miralejos and author of the Ratón book series, holds a M.A. and Ph.D. in Child Development from Tufts University, with a focus on cognitive development and the role of imagination in learning. A native Spanish speaker from Mexico City, her teaching experience includes roles as a Guest Lecturer at Tufts University, Co-founder of a program to teach Spanish to parents of a bilingual school in Cambridge, MA, and Spanish Teacher at the Atrium School in Watertown, MA, where she developed and taught the Spanish program in grades PreK - 8th, for 6 years.
“One of my greatest interests as a foreign language educator has revolved around reshaping the way Spanish speaking cultures are portrayed, and challenging the stereotypes common in existing teaching materials. Despite the plethora of books and media available, finding materials that do a good job incorporating accurate cultural elements is a struggle. To address this resource gap, I developed my own materials, which led to the character Ratón. The little mouse developed a personality, a backstory, friends, and even traveled to Mexico. All this he would share with students through his stories, calling them to use their imagination and to engage playfully with him. What started as interactive slideshows in the classroom eventually turned into a series of books and activities to support Spanish acquisition while maintaining a fundamentally human spark of life."
Aside from teaching, Susanna is an avid bikepacker. With her family, she has cycled through Canada, Portugal, France, Belgium, Turkey, Oman, South Korea, Vietnam, Norway, and Sweden. Ratón, of course, is always with them. He loves exploring landscapes, meeting people, experiencing kindness, and is always wondering how best to share these experiences with others, in Spanish. When not teaching or developing materials, Susanna can probably be found on her bicycle or planning her family’s next adventure. Ratón is probably there too, if that's who you're looking for.