author: Sarah Stewart
illustrator: David
Small
Farrar Straus Giroux, 2012
preschool-grade 3
Mexican
The Quiet Place takes place in 1957, as young Isabel and
her family move from an unnamed town in Mexico to what appears to be Detroit.
The front endpapers, frontispiece and title page depict unhappy people, skinny
dogs and a small wagon hitched to the back of the family’s battered car, which
holds all their belongings—some chairs, a dresser and a few boxes.
As they travel north
and move into their new neighborhood, Isabel and her family encounter only
friendly white people—friendly white border guards, friendly white parents,
friendly white children, and a friendly white teacher who doesn’t speak Spanish
but smiles at Isabel. Still, the girl, feeling sad and alone, retreats with her
teddy bear into a large cardboard box, which she decorates and transforms into
a “quiet place.”
Isabel loves her
cardboard box; she feels safe and comfortable in it. The author and illustrator
may not have intended for this to be a metaphor, but it is loaded with
significance. Isabel’s box fills the entire book cover. On the blue flaps,
she’s drawn Mexican designs of sun, moon, stars, plants and animals. The inside
“walls” are bright yellow, as is Isabel’s dress. There’s an orange shining sun
on top and a shuttered window drawn on the side. On the floor, there are books,
crayons, and her teddy bear for company. From inside her “quiet place,” Isabel,
with a book on her lap, is looking out and smiling.
There are no
other Mexican families in Isabel’s new neighborhood, no other children who
share her life, who speak her language, who play games with her. When a rainstorm
destroys her “quiet place,” she is inconsolable. But soon, she’s able to
accumulate more boxes, ones that had held presents for the white children for
whom her mother has been catering birthday parties.
From inside these
discarded boxes, Isabel writes home to her Auntie Lupita, who has taught her
English. The entire narrative consists of these letters—all in perfect, grammatical
English—in which Isabel describes her emotions and new experiences. A final
spread shows Isabel, after having creatively decorated all of her boxes,
joyfully celebrating her birthday with her family and some newly found friends.
Some of these friends appear to be ethnically mixed, in that the artist has
tinted their faces brown. In a final letter to Auntie Lupita, Isabel expresses
her happiness and, rather than ending with “Missing you,” concludes with “Wish
you were here.”
Small’s colorful
mixed-media artwork, which includes several wordless spreads, highlights
Isabel’s initial loneliness and her transformation into a joyful child who has
successfully assimilated. The Quiet Place
received rave reviews from The New York
Times, School Library Journal, Booklist, Kirkus, and Publishers Weekly,
among others. The reviewer from School
Library Journal, for instance, wrote that the story “poignantly capture(s)
the emotional hardships and triumphs of the immigrant experience.”
No, it doesn’t.
First, setting
this story in 1957, when thousands of Mexican workers were being recruited to
work in Chicago’s meat packing plants and Detroit’s auto and steel industries,
is the author’s and illustrator’s convenient way of evading the racist and
violent historical and contemporary realities for immigrant and migrant Mexican
workers and their families—and presenting a feel-good story for the intended
audience.
It’s clear that
this intended audience does not
include Mexican children. It does not
include young children for whom Spanish is their first language. It does not include young immigrant or migrant
children. And it certainly does not
include young children of color. No one in this story speaks Spanish, not even
a Mexican mother consoling her child. Indeed, the only Spanish words here are
“salsa,” “tamales,” “guacamole,” and the phrase “muchas gracias,” which is
immediately translated into English. Since young Isabel already reads and
writes fluent English, she has no issues involving learning or adapting to a
new language. In fact, in Isabel’s world, there are no issues—no violence, no discrimination, no racism, no
bullying, no taunting, and no suffering—because author, illustrator, and
publisher do not have to see any.
Suffering, like the
children in crisis on the border. Now.
Terrified
mothers and fathers are sending their young children to the north, because it’s
too dangerous where they live. Sometimes in the company of smugglers, these
refugee children are literally running for their lives. When they get here,
they are picked up by the Border Patrol and brought to detention centers with
no schools, no books, and no permission to be reunited with relatives in the
US. None of these thousands of unaccompanied children coming from Mexico or
Central America in the last few years has been given a visa. These lonely,
frightened refugee children are living in limbo—they miss their parents, their
grandparents, their aunts and uncles, their cousins, and their friends—and they
have no idea of what will happen to them.
Under the
illusion of “diversity,” The Quiet Place
portrays immigrant and migrant children as successful as long as they quickly
and easily learn English and adapt to the dominant culture while discarding
their own. Here, the author, illustrator and publisher have transformed Mexican
and Mexican-American children’s real
lives, experiences and problems into a feel-good, pain-free picture book about
assimilation for young readers who have never been forced to face the enormous
difficulties associated with immigration or migration. And in doing so—in giving
a young Mexican girl a discarded box
to live in—the author, illustrator and publisher have contributed to the public
shaming of Mexican and Mexican-American children, as well as of all immigrant, migrant
and refugee children in this country.
Imagine a
teacher’s reading this book to a classroom of kindergarteners in, say, El Paso.
Imagine the expressions on their faces. Imagine the shocked silence and the
silent tears. What an awful thing to inflict on our children. The Quiet Place is not recommended.
—Beverly Slapin
(published 11/11/15)
