@Debi: In French you have a verb followed by a certain preposition and that never changes.
In Spanish, sometimes you have an "a" preceding a person with the same verb that won't take it with a thing. You can have "a" with a direct object; this is called the "personal a". An old teacher explained it to me like this: "you show respect for the person by putting an intermediary between them and the action; you can eat the person, but you still show respect for them by using 'a'."
Example: You could say: "la bruja se comió un sapo" (the witch ate a toad), but "la bruja se comió a los niños" (the withch ate the children).
Some more examples:
- Llevé el coche al taller. (I took the car to the shop.)
- Llevé a mis hijos a la escuela. (I took the children to school.)
- Encontraron los libros perdidos. (They found the lost books.)
- Encontraron a los turistas perdidos. (They found the lost tourists.)
- Trajimos un pastel a la fiesta. (We brought a cake to the party.)
- Traje a mi novio a la fiesta. (I brought my boyfriend to the party.)