Spanish-language verse from Spain's Golden Age to the major poets of modern Latin America". In later years, she would recall hearing the verse of Theresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, José Santos Chocano, and Federico Garcia Lorca. As a child, Espaillat was required by her father to speak only Castilian Spanish inside the family apartment. She was also required to speak both English and Spanish with correct pronunciation and grammar. Furthermore, she was strictly forbidden to mix both languages together. "Don Homero" Espaillat Brache viewed English and Spanish as, "world languages", which deserved the respect of being written and spoken properly. Even though Espaillat found this very frustrating as a child and would even, "end up crying", she has expressed gratitude to her father for making her, "truly bilingual." While attending elementary school at P.S. 94, Espaillat would often visit the public library next door during her lunch break. During a, "guided trespass", into the adult section of the library, an enthusiastic Espaillat came upon a copy of the 1942 poetry anthology, A Treasury of Great Poems English and American, in which Louis Untermeyer collected the literary canon of poetry in English from the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain to the interwar period of the 20th century. When Rhina asked her parents to buy her a copy, the Espaillats were, "delighted by their daughter's passion for a compilation of poems rather than dolls or dresses", but they could not afford the book's asking price of $3.75, which was a sizeable amount of money for a refugee family in 1943. In response, Don Homero Espaillat Brache asked for help from his daughter's godfather, Rafael Brache, who bought a copy of the book as a 1943 Christmas gift for his god-daughter. Espaillat has described receiving the gift of Untermeyer's book as, "another turning point in my life." She adds, "I ate it up! It's such a marvellous book, and it became my poetic Bible." Decades later, the book remains one of Espaillat's most cherished possessions. In a June 2014 email to her biographers, Espaillat described the volume as, "bandaged with tape but miraculously still in one piece and still at work, like a brave old veteran." Even though she began composing poetry in English when she was only 8-years old, Espaillat's first surviving poem in English, First Snowfall, was written when she was only ten