Where two languages belong together

Sonrisa Villa is an original animated series for toddlers, preschoolers and the families around them. We want little ones to grow up hearing English and Spanish as two equally wonderful ways to share ideas, solve problems, laugh and play.

The villa is a sunny hillside town with a tiled plaza, a cozy home, Lilian’s art room, a vegetable garden and a farm meadow. Every place is hand-painted, and every episode visits a few of them, so children start to feel at home there.

Lilian, our host, talks directly to the children watching. Taylor helps her out. Mateo, Cordelia, Ninna and Quincy learn and play together, and Tico the parrot and Luna the llama bring the jokes, the songs and a lot of heart.

Many children’s shows treat a second language as something to be translated. We don’t. In Sonrisa Villa, characters talk the way real bilingual families do — a sentence in Spanish, a reply in English, a quick switch when something exciting happens.

A few focus words in each episode are always shown in both languages and connected to the same thing on screen. Everything else is simply conversation, story and play.

Every character and place begins as approved original artwork, and we keep each character looking exactly like themselves from episode to episode. Scripts aim for roughly equal amounts of English and Spanish, with real pauses for children to answer, point and move.

We keep things calm: no flashing, no loud surprises and no pressure. Just a warm place to visit for a few minutes at a time.