Isabela Huffman is a precocious 8½ year-old girl who can't seem to keep herself out of trouble on a visit to Guanajuato, Mexico, with her mother. She wants to be the president when she grows up. Or a ballerina. Or the president and a ballerina. She's dramatic. She sings on the bus, screams like a baby after putting chile powder on her fresh mango and convinces her mom to buy five pair of new shoes for a big family. No matter how many times her mom asks her to just sit down like a normal little girl, she just can't help getting up to take more pictures of her adventures. When will Isabela ever sit down?

Las aventuras de Isabela uses a vocabulary of only 200 Spanish words to tell a 2,200-word story. It is repetitive and simple and uses many cognates to make the story comprehensible to beginning adults and children.