Let's learn Filipino with Auri's fun language books!

Repetition spices up how we write and speak. In Filipino, we repeat words or portions of words to mimic sound, emphasize, intensify, disburse, fasten ideas together, and celebrate plurality. Our plurality! Parents and children who open SARI-SARI: Mga Salitang Pauli-ulit are in for a wild, circuitous ride—palibot-libot style—through the Filipino language.

Following the National Children’s Book Award winning book, TAKBO! Mga Pandiwa (2016) and SAYA/SAYA! Isang Baybay, Ibang Saysay (2019), SARI-SARI: Mga Salitang Paulit-ulit is the third title in the language series written and illustrated by Auri Asuncion-Yambao. 

With Tahanan Books moving closer to its third decade of making books for children, it has noticed a constant increase in families looking for bilingual picture books that can help young readers and even older learners of the Filipino language make their study fun and engaging.

“It gratifies me to see our young people express themselves in our own language” says Auri.

“It’s like finding a link between their new souls and those that came before them.”

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AURI ASUNCION YAMBAO is a multi-awarded book designer and the illustrator of BANDILA: The Story of the Philippine Flag (1998), Yaya Niya, Nanay Ko (UNICEF, 2002), FROM MANILA WITH LOVE: A Balikbayan Story (2015), and Ang Mahabang Sampayan ni Nanay (2018), all produced by Tahanan Books.

For the last 25 years, she has designed over 40 books for Tahanan, seven of which have won the National Children’s Book Award.

Auri is descended from the illustrious Asuncion family of artists. Her father, Rafael, designed and illustrated Philippine bills, coins, and stamps. Her great-grandfather, Hilarion, was a painter; and her great-great-grandfather, Leoncio, is known as the Father of Modern Religious Sculpture.

Auri herself has found joy illustrating children’s books. After retiring from a long career in advertising, and while successfully battling cancer, she wrote and illustrated TAKBO! Mga Pandiwa, for which she received a 2018 National Children’s Book Award. In 2019, she followed this up with a book of homonyms titled SAYA-SAYA: Isang Baybay, Ibang Saysay. This is her third language book.