Isabel and Her Colores Go to School

author: Alexandra Alessandri

illustrator: Courtney Dawson

Sleeping Bear Press, 2021 

preschool-up

Mexican American

Young Isabel is lost and frightened. As a Spanish-speaker—an hablante whose language is made of “pinks and yellows and purples”—she’s about to begin kindergarten, where English—“with stormy blues and blizzard whites”—is the only language spoken. Her heart “pitter-pattering like a summer’s rain,” Isabel pleads with her mother not to send her, and her mother encourages her with a hug and a dicho: “Al mal tiempo, buena cara”—“To bad times, a good face.” 

As the anxious little girl enters this foreign place, her teacher welcomes her in Spanish:—“¡Bienvenidos!”—a greeting she understands. Still, in her new, mixed classroom, she struggles with this strange-sounding language; the easy communication among the children and between the children and their teacher. While she knows that, like her own language, these foreign words mean things, she doesn’t know which words mean what things. It’s all so confusing!

Over and over, Isabel misunderstands her teacher: When the children exercise and count “one, two, three,” Isabel joyfully counts “uno, dos, tres” and then realizes that the colors in her head are “crashing against each other like planets colliding in an explosion of stars.”

And when Sarah, a Black child, offers her friendship, Isabel doesn’t understand. She responds, “no entiendo,” and the miscommunication embarrasses both of them.

But things change slowly. When the teacher announces that it’s coloring time, Isabel recognizes that the word, “coloring” sounds like “colorear,” and she draws a picture of herself and Sarah together. The first Spanish word that Sarah learns is “amigas,” and the first English word for Isabel is “friends.”

And when the teacher holds up Isabel’s drawing, of the two friends, “the stormy blues and blizzard whites softened to a brilliant aguamarina—just like home.”  

Alessandri’s conversational Spanish translations, which appear both in the English narrative and on a bright box at the top or bottom of each page, are excellent. For instance, when Isabel’s mom comforts her daughter on the night before the first day of school, the English text reads:

“It’s OK to be scared.” Mama’s voice was soft and amber like a ripened mango. She gave Isabel a squishy, squashy hug.

And the Spanish reads:

“—Es normal tener miedo—dijo mami, con su voz dulce y dorado como el mango maduro. Ella le dio a Isabel un abrazo de oso. (“It’s normal to be scared,” Mommy said, her voice sweet and golden as a ripe mango. She gave Isabel a bear hug.)

Courtney Dawson’s vibrant illustrations perfectly reflect Isabel’s emotions as they transition from fear to confusion to understanding to confidence, and the colors in her head slowly change from the “stormy blues and blizzard whites” of English to join with the “pinks and yellows and purples of español.” 

*Highly recommended for all home, classroom and library collections.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 8/6/2012)

I Love You, Baby Burrito

author: Angela Dominguez

illustrator: Angela Dominguez

publisher: Roaring Brook Press, 2021

preschool-up (Mexican American)

On the cover, a tightly-swaddled infant, fists slightly emerging, is fast asleep in an oval cradle—resembling a “baby burrito” in a basket.

Next to a birdhouse in the crook of a tree, a protective mamá and papá robin greet their newly hatched nestlings; while inside their home, a mixed couple celebrate the swaddling of their new café-con-leche infant. 

Dominguez’s artwork—using a gentle, pastel palette of watercolor paint and colored pencil combined with digital imaging—lovingly portrays the first few hours in the lives of the young couple together with their beyond adorable bebé.

Throughout, one of the dominant colors is a soft green, which readers will see on the cover and the infant’s cap and blanket, and a toy llama. While most of the English text is set in black type, each larger bolded word and phrase in Spanish, appearing together with an illustration—is highlighted in the same, gentle green, and merges with the other design elements.

As the new parents speculate on their baby’s face, fingers, and toes, Dominguez deftly conveys the meanings of the Spanish words and phrases by her illustrations—“This is your delightful carita, which I think looks a little bit like mine. And these are your precious manitas and deditos…that I could gobble up”—and there’s also a helpful Spanish-English glossary and pronunciation guide on the final pages. 

As their baby awakes and begins to signal distress, one of the parents asks:

Speaking of . . . 

Are you hungry? 

¿Tienes hambre?

I Love You, Baby Burrito is a serene and tranquil portrait of a loving family welcoming their new addition.

*Highly recommended for all home, classroom and library collections.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 7/18/2021)

Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky

author: David Bowles

illustrators: Christian and Ramon Cardenas (“LxsDos”)

Cinco Puntos Press, 2018

grades 7-up (Mexican, Mesoamerican)

In the US schools, Mexican history and the cultures and belief systems of the Indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica—if taught at all—are generally relegated to a paragraph or two, and fraught with egregious historical and cultural erasures. Here’s a typical example:

Quetzalcoatl was a deity-king, kind-hearted (he didn’t believe in human sacrifice) and wise (he was said to have invented the Aztec calendar, books, and writing). The people’s affection for Quetzalcoatl made the rival gods jealous. They acted together to trick him. One day the Evil One went into Quetzalcoatl’s palace holding a mirror. When Quetzalcoatl looked in it, instead of his own reflection, he saw a bearded, long-faced person. He knew that if his people saw him like that, they would be terrified. He had no choice but to leave. He went down to the seashore with his servants and made a raft of serpents. He told his servants that he would leave them, too. The servants wept, but Quetzalcoatl told them not to grieve. He promised that one day he would return and be their king again. Then he sailed away in the direction of the rising sun. (1)

Here is a deconstruction of the paragraph, above:

• His actual name was “Ce-Acatl” (first name, “One Reed”), “Topiltzin” (“our beloved prince,” what the people of Tollan and the rest of the Toltec Empire called him), “Quetzalcoatl” (his title, probably from the Toltecs). 

• Quetzalcoatl was Toltec, not Aztec; so, of course, he did not “invent” the “Aztec calendar, books, or writing.” 

• There was no rival-god-jealousy or tricking. Throughout the reign of Quetzalcoatl, his twin brother and principle rival, Tezcatlipoca, along with the other priests, had lost power and were angered by the elimination of human sacrifice.

• Calling Tezcatlipoca the “Evil One” is a cultural erasure, since Mesoamerican religions didn’t and don’t pit good versus evil. Rather, the struggle was and is between chaos and order.

• Quetzalcoatl did see his own reflection in the mirror. He had been so dedicated to worship and rule that he had not noticed that he was aging. Understanding himself to be mortal and weak, he worried that people would despise him. 

• Before he sailed away “in the direction of the rising sun,” Quetzalcoatl spent years traveling through Mesoamerica, founding new cities, and teaching people respect for the gods and to avoid human sacrifice. Then he left, promising to return.

All this is to say that these traditional stories from Mesoamerica are not simplistic. Unlike European “fairy tales,” they do not pit “good” against “evil.” Rather, they are complex. They are about the struggles between chaos and order—the struggles to find balance.

With Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky: Myths of Mexico, David Bowles, scholar, historian, linguist, storyteller, Chicano activist—and damn good writer—sets out to correct the record. And he does. All of it. As the well-used idioms go, he pulls no punches and leaves no stone unturned. 

On the stunning cover, executed by “LxsDos’” (Christian and Ramon Cardenas, “street artists from El Paso”)—together on a pen-and-ink drawn, digitally colored, textured dark-blue background representing the cosmos, the dark heart of sky—sit the Dual Gods, the complementary halves, Ometeotl. In the Nahua language, they are lovingly called “the grandparents,” each half enjoying the company of its other half. Surrounded by the feathered serpent, Ometeotl dreams “a vast world and multi-tiered sky, peopled with creatures so diverse and wonderful that the very thought of them brought joy to our grandparents’ hearts.”

Lxs Dos created the interior illustrations with pen and ink on paper. They play around with imagery, and each is symbolic of the contents of a chapter and a hint of what is to follow. And they are all gorgeous. In “The Fifth Age and the Reign of Demigods,” for instance, readers will see an Indigenous woman, kneeling over a large metlatl to grind up—not corn, which is an essential life metaphor, but skeletons. Over her right shoulder flits a tiny butterfly and over her left shoulder, a hummingbird hovers. Both are signs of rebirth and life. It is the Fifth Age, remember? “The present era. Our time.” This Indigenous woman—the Divine Mother—is creating, from the old bones, a new and better race of people. 

In Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky, every story is a treasure that younger readers (and adults alike) will enjoy reading and rereading—as each reading becomes a new and exciting experience. Each story in a theme (“The First Three Ages of the World,” “The Fourth Age and the Hero Twins,” “The Fifth Age and the Reign of Demigods,” “The Toltecs and the Rise of Civilization,” “Tales of the Maya,” “Aztecs Ascendant” and finally, “Conquest and Courage”) naturally follows the one before, and each section begins with a thoughtful “convocation”—helpful for adult readers, and accessible to younger readers as well—that introduces the theme and discusses the content. The “convocations,” David Bowles told me, are what he feels thinking about his children and grandchildren down the road, whom he loves so much that he wants these stories to be part of their lives. He imagines himself sitting on a mesquite stump, he said, “sharing stories and songs and trying to be whole.”

Bowles’ renditions of these traditional stories—which he translated from the fragmented oral and written mythologies of “pre-Columbian” Mexico and seamlessly pieced together—will enable readers of today to understand and appreciate both the stories themselves, their contexts, and their places and functions in history.

For instance: In most, if not all, children’s books about “La Llorona,” she is a vain, self-centered (Indigenous) young woman who, after marrying a wealthy Spanish nobleman and bearing two children, finds out that he has been cheating on her. So, in a fit of jealousy and rage, she drowns her children, and from then on, loudly mourns them: “¡Mis hijos!” she screams for eternity, “¡Mis hijos!” And Mexican children of today listen for her at night, and are frightened. 

But according to Bowles, there is much more to the story. “Lloronas” were a common occurrence in Nauhua lore, he says. In “The Anguish of Citlalli” (pp. 256-261), the Xoxchimilca woman bravely chose the only option available to her: to surrender her beloved children to the water rather than to surrender them to the horrors of colonialism. Although the Maya held out for a century or so, there was no place for the Nauhua people to go. 

In more contemporary history, this is not a unique occurrence, either. The “Llorona” story reminds me of Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Beloved, in which a family of formerly-enslaved people in Cincinnati is haunted by the ghost of Margaret Garner, who had killed her young daughter and attempted to kill her other children to spare them from being returned to slavery. (2)

Writing a complex yet accessible book such as Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky must have been a tough thing to accomplish. It involved familiarity with the historia and cuentos of what is now referred to as Mesoamerica, finding the fragments and pulling the translations together—and for each one, folding in the historical and political texture and finding the right voice. 

Perhaps most importantly, rather than focusing on the colonizers, the traditional stories here center Indigeneity. “The most we can hope for,” David Bowles told me, “is to center Indigenous lives, especially those stories of women that have not been told. We are heirs to the stories—last convocation.” 

“This is work we need to do as a community. We need to bring our history together in affirming ways. Every time there are chaos and destruction, a wave of creation follows. We cannot forget, we cannot allow it to be erased. We need to keep it alive.”

Every school in the Americas, at least, should have copies of Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart of Sky—and teach from it. It’s an invaluable resource.

*Highly recommended for all home, classroom and library collections.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 6/8/2021)

[Note: Muchísimas gracias a mi amigo y colega, David Bowles, por su gran amabilidad y generosidad. I want to thank David Bowles for his kindness, generosity, and dedication to all the grandparents and their children.]

Footnotes:

1. Yellowhorn, Eldon, and Kathy Lowinger, What the Eagle Sees: Indigenous Stories of Rebellion and Renewal. Toronto: Annick Press (2019), p. 18.
2. Morrison, Toni, Beloved. New York: Alfred A. Knopf (1987).

Francisco X. Stork's Second Chance: An Interview

Authors don’t often get second chances. When a book is published, it’s published, with all its reviews—the good, the bad, and the mixed. Francisco X. Stork is a happy exception. This past May, his novel On the Hook came out from Scholastic, to great acclaim, including on this site (lynmillerlachmann.com). This 2021 book for teen readers is a reimagining of his 2006 YA novel Behind the Eyes. Today, Francisco visits the blog to talk about how his writing has evolved over the past 15 years and what has changed in Hector’s story from then to now. In addition to Behind the Eyes and On the Hook, Francisco X. Stork is the author of the YA novels Marcelo in the Real World (2009), The Last Summer of the Death Warriors (2010), Irises (2012), The Memory of Light (2016), Disappeared (2017, and Illegal: A Disappeared Novel (2020).

LML: You’ve talked about how you rethought and rewrote your earlier YA novel, Behind the Eyes, to turn it into On the Hook. How did that original story come about?

FXS: I wrote Behind the Eyes (some fifteen years ago) when my son and daughter were teenagers. They were living a comfortable life in the suburbs of Boston, headed to good colleges, and I wanted them to see a different side of life, so I wrote about Hector, a young man growing up poor and afraid in the housing projects of El Paso. Hector’s story was based on my own story growing up in El Paso. I lived in the same housing projects that are depicted in the novel and, like Hector, I lived with fear of getting noticed.

Why did you choose to rewrite an old, out of print book rather than leaving it behind completely?

I really love Behind the Eyes. I’m very proud of the book that opened the doors for me to the world of young adult literature. There is no doubt in my mind that it is the best book I could have written at the time. But a few years after it was published, I began to see that there was untapped potential in Hector’s story. Hector’s story was not reaching some of the young men who were caught in a cycle of hatred and violence. I am grateful to Arthur Levine who saw what I saw and gave me the opportunity recreate Hector’s story.

How did the novel change in the course of your rewrite? How much of the change had to do with your development as a writer and how much with changes in the outside world?

On the Hook takes some of the existing characters and settings and turns them into a new story. The characters that remain, while they retain their old names, are different, more complex and more real. It is no longer just Hector’s story, but it is also the story of Hector’s antagonist, Joey. There are relationships that were not there before like the friendship between Hector and Azi. Most of all, Hector’s character and actions are a balance of interiority and agency that was only possible for me to create after many years of writing, after the publication of six other novels. I hope also that I am wiser than I was fifteen years ago! I know for sure that I am more acquainted with the debilitating and destructive effects of hatred (both in myself and in society) than I was then.

How might On the Hook speak more to young readers today? What do you want them to take away from this book?

Hector’s story is a current story. It reflects the way that hatred has become prevalent and even considered “normal” in today’s world. I hope that the book becomes a meditation on violence and hatred, on how it grows and how we might see a way to take the energy of anger and hatred and put it into the hard task of finding common ground with others.

What’s next for your writing? Do you have plans to stay with young adult fiction or move into another category or genre?

I am working on a young adult novel now that will come out late next year. I’m switching gears a little and writing a love story. I don’t have any ideas for any fiction work after that. I’m open to writing another young adult novel if the inspiration comes. I’m happy writing about and for young people and am not interested in writing adult fiction. In the back of my mind there is the seed of an idea about writing a book about the practice of writing for young writers. So, maybe.

Thank you! I look forward to the new novel!

—Lyn Miller-Lachmann

(Lyn originally interviewed Francisco X. Stork for her blog, lynmillerlachmann.com. Thank you, Lyn, for permission to share this interview on De Colores (decoloresreviews.blogspot.com.).

On the Hook

author: Francisco X. Stork

publisher: Scholastic Press, 2001

grades 6-up

(Mexican American)

Francisco X. Stork is an acclaimed author of eight novels for young readers. His most recent novel, On the Hook, is a reimagining of his debut YA novel, Behind the Eyes, which was published in 2006. We’re fortunate to have this second-chance book out in the world.

On the Hook is full of ethical dilemmas with characters about whom we deeply care. Sixteen-year-old Hector Robles is a chess enthusiast, an honor student, and devoted to his family, aware of his responsibilities ever since the death of his father from cancer several years earlier. He and his classmate Azi, an immigrant from Iran, are becoming close, and he ponders what it means to have a girlfriend and to be a good boyfriend. He wants to stay out of trouble, but in the projects of El Paso, Texas, trouble seems to follow him in the form of drug dealer Chavo—whose  one-time girlfriend is now engaged to Hector’s older brothe—and Chavo’s drug-addicted younger brother Joey. At least Hector’s older brother has turned his life around and is planning to move the family out of the projects and to safety once he fixes up a house belonging to his boss.

In one violent night, Chavo and Joey wipe out Hector and his family’s future. Hector and Joey are on their way to a military-style therapeutic boys’ school together, with Hector single-mindedly plotting revenge against Joey. Here, things become interesting. Hector had won an award for an essay about “happiness,” focusing on his father’s journey from Mexico to the United States, his hard work, and his close family, but now he sees that Joey is the one who’s happy. Freed from his brother and his drug addiction, Joey is thriving in the rigidly-structured environment of the school. Does Hector now want to snatch that promise of happiness away, the way Joey snatched his happiness away months earlier? What are the consequences if he does? And how can Hector find happiness again?

Stork’s novels for young readers are deeply thought-provoking, and this one is no exception. His third-person voice conveys a respect for teen readers without preaching, and the principal characters are multi-dimensional—the heroes of their own stories. The theme of happiness runs through the book in unexpected ways, as we see that even someone like Joey deserves a better life than the one he has had so far.

On the Hook is a great book for teen reading circles. Today, the questions it explores go beyond the personal—stories of individuals and families—to society as a whole. We are at a point in our country’s history where hatreds have turned murderous, and reconciliation needs to happen at all levels of society. We all deserve happiness.

*Highly recommended for all home, classroom and library collections.

—Lyn Miller-Lachmann

(published 5/28/2021)

(Note: Lyn reviewed On the Hook simultaneously for De Colores and her blog, lynmillerlachmann.com.)

Paletero Man

author: Lucky Díaz

illustrator: Micah Player

Harper, 2021

grades 2-up

(Mexican American) 

On the cover, a young Mexican American boy is daydreaming. With the L.A. skyline behind him, his thoughts are framed by a virtual rainbow of delicious paletas (fruit ices) of differing shapes and flavors. What a struggle it is to choose!

Paleteros are street sellers of paletas and helados, Mexican-style ice and ice cream pops in a variety of gelato and sorbet flavors. They’re sold from pushcarts called paleterías. Although the words don’t have English translations, paleteros and their paleterías are a beloved cultural icon in Mexican and other Latino communities across the U.S. and in many Latin American countries as well.

Paletero Man—the song and story—honors the paleteros, much like the song, Watermelon Man (written by Herbie Hancock and recorded by Oscar Brown, Jr.) honored the Black street vendors who sold fresh watermelon slices back in the day.

It’s the hottest day of the year in L.A. and, with his pocket full of change, a young child runs off to find the neighborhood paletero. Along the way, he greets friends, relatives, and other street vendors and shop keepers; among them, Tío Ernesto, who sells tamales; Ms. Lee, who sells Korean BBQ; and Frank, who repairs bikes. 

The youngster’s first-person narrative, in A-B-C-B rhyme and code-switching, is well done and a fun read. For instance, when he finally reaches Paletero José, the child says:

But today I’d like piña

Do you have that sabor?

He smiles a big smile—

“¡Claro! Para ti, ¡el mejor!”

But as he reaches into his pocket, the child finds that all the change he had saved up—is gone! Fortunately, Tío Ernesto, Frank, and Ms. Lee had seen the coins fall to the ground, picked them up, and returned them. And Paletero José, moved by their deed, gives everyone in the neighborhood a free paleta:

Whether it’s stormy

or whether it’s sunny,

whether or not 

you have any money,

I’ll always help out

an amigo in need.

Yo te prometo—

an amigo indeed!

Selling paletas is not a great money-making gig, so it would be a rare event for a low-income neighborhood paletero to give away his entire inventory. But it could happen—and especially, as an acknowledgment of generosity to neighbors who do the right thing. Paletero Man is a celebration of Mexican life and culture in the U.S.—and it’s as sweet as a paleta. 

In Paletero Man, Díaz recognizes a common experience grounded in goodness. While small deeds are rarely rewarded, youngest readers can share with each other the different ways that a community can come together in a time of need.

Player’s bright digital illustrations are vibrant and joyous, and complement the exuberance of a young child who—with his relatives, friends, and neighbors—live, work and play together in a multicultural, multiethnic, multigenerational community. Here, complexions, clothing and hairstyles vary, several men sport tattoos, and, in the  park, there’s a hijabi with her child.  

And worth noting is that, in this story, the Spanish words and phrases are not italicized. Rather, Spanish and English—like the people in the community—are mixed.

Paletero Man is Lucky Díaz’s and Micah Player’s homage to Mexican culture—both in Mexico and in the U.S. The story is as delightful as a juicy paleta de horchata or melón. 

Warning to young readers and their adults who find the song, “El Paletero” performed by Latin Grammy-winning Lucky Díaz and his Family Jam Band on The Friday Zone on PBS (scroll down at luckydiazmusic.com): Make sure you have nothing else to do but dance all day. The song and rhythm are that catching. 

*Highly recommended for all home, classroom and library collections.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 3/18/21)

[Note: Horchata and mélon are my favorite flavors.]

13th Street Series

Book 1: Battle of the Bad-Breath Bats

Book 2: The Fire-Breathing Ferret Fiasco

Book 3: Clash of the Cackling Cougars

Book 4: The Shocking Shark Showdown

author: David Bowles

illustrator: Shane Clester

Harper Chapters, 2020

grades 1-3 

(Mexican American)

In this fast-paced action series, young readers join Mexican American cousins  in South Texas—Malia Malapata, Dante Davila, and Ivan Eisenberg—as they engage with ghoulies and ghosties in the strange and dangerous world of “13th Street.” Malia’s la fregona—the boss, Dante’s the computer genius, and Ivan’s the bookish, sensitive one.

“Progress bars” mark the completion of chapters, and at the end of each story, young readers see how many chapters, pages and words they’ve read. Suggested activities (“Think! Feel! Act!”) encourage youngsters to work together in community.

Appearing as a barely visible safety check, a mysterious elder named Doña Chabela Aguilar kicks off and ends every story. In the fourth book, readers find out why she sends Malia, Dante and Ivan to alternate worlds to battle monsters. 

Book 1: Battle of the Bad-Breath Bats

In Battle of the Bad-Breath Bats, Malia, Dante and Ivan—while visiting their aunt Lucy for the summer—get lost somewhere on “13th Street.” As they work together to escape from the street that doesn’t exist, they must (with the aid of a friendly skeleton) battle a swarm of Snatch Bats—the “bad breath bats”—who can be defeated only by water guns firing “minty-fresh” streams of mouthwash.

Book 2: The Fire-Breathing Ferret Fiasco

In The Fire-Breathing Ferret Fiasco, the three cousins are back in their hometown, Nopalitos. When their school bus takes a wrong turn, everyone winds up back on 13th Street (the street that doesn’t exist), where they, together with the driver and their friends, brother Robby and his sister, Susana, encounter giant, fire-breathing ferrets from another dimension. Hiding inside a vacant warehouse, they meet a friendly nuclear family of Mictecah—Undead Folk, or zombies—who lead them to safety and a time portal to the past.

Book 3: Clash of the Cackling Cougars

In Clash of the Cackling Cougars, the cousins, on a ski trip, are sucked through another portal and accosted by joke-telling cougars: “Why did the human put its money in the freezer? It wanted cold, hard cash!” The cougars’ loud laughter and  horrid jokes sicken the cousins. Literally. But as they soon find out, the laughter also is a weapon of mind control.

Saved by a green elf with a glowing stone that heals Ivan’s heart and stops the revolting laughing echoes in his brain, Ivan rejoins his cousins, trapped in the Underworld with zombies, ghosts and skeletons. Using catnip powder to control the cougars, they escape, but must go back to rescue Micky’s dog, Bruno.

Book 4: The Shocking Shark Showdown

In The Shocking Shark Showdown, Doña Chabela reveals that she’s been sending our courageous young trio down the magical portals to rescue her grandson, Mickey—the “Quiet Prince”—who is trapped on 13th Street and needs their help to find Bruno and open the return portal. They have to figure out when and how to get there.

Finding themselves under 13th Street, they navigate a stinky sewer filled with a menacing Shiver of electric sharks until Bruno shows up and menaces them. Then they meet a bunch of raccoon-like talking pikos who play tumbling games in the water. (As everyone knows, sharks hate pikos and pikos hate sharks, and since Bruno’s been around, much of the Shiver seems to have gone elsewhere.)

It will all be over soon, thinks Malia. Mickey will return home with Chabela. No more 13th Street. 

But first they have to disable the sharks by salinating the water. Guided by a rhyming pico named Pecki, the trio of humans climbs through a manhole into an abandoned grocery store, fills sacks with salt, and gets menaced by razor-clawed rats whom they escape by finding an “impossible room” whose floor somehow “glitches” out of existence.

Back in the sewer, the trio encounters a boat that looks like the upside-down skull of a giant dragon, crewed by little elves called chaneks, and, standing at the front is—Mickey Aguilar.

Hinting at the next books in the series, Mickey tells the others that he’s called the Quiet Prince because “this place has a noisy queen, and she’s stealing human children.” 

And back through the portal, back into the world Mickey had left behind, go our heroes. Except for Malia, who first has to escape another shark attack before she returns to the aquarium to meet her teacher and class.

~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~

Shane Clester’s digital black-and-white images, drawn on an electronic tablet, give these books a graphic novel appearance. Especially impressive is Malia’s expression as she’s about to vomit, nauseated at the cougars’ terrible jokes. 

Capitalized comic-book noises abound (“The bats couldn’t stop themselves. One by one they smashed into the closed door! BOOM! BAM! BASH!”). Or words are spaced to slow down the reader (“Lightning    flashed    overhead”) or italicized for creepy cultural capital (“¡Uy, cucuy!”).

There are giant doses of snark. For instance, Dante muses, “What’s most important is in our hearts,” to which Malia answers, “Gimme a break!”

There are biological and cultural impossibilities, such as “a calavera with friendly eyes” (uh, skulls don’t have eyes…) whose “bones made weird marimba sounds as he walked.”

And what would a series like this be without fart jokes?

Young readers will get wrapped up in Bowles’ and Clester’s creepy and hilarious 13th Street series, which continues. 

*Highly recommended for all home, classroom and library collections.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 2/21/20)

The Smoking Mirror (Garza Twins, Book One)

author: David Bowles 

IFWG Publishing, 2015 
grades 5-up
Mexican American

The multi-talented Chicano scholar, historian, linguist—and damn good (not to mention award-winning) writer of spell-binding children’s and middle-grade books has gifted the world with a five-volume (so far) series featuring the Garza Twins. The Smoking Mirror is Book One.

When 12-year-old small-town Mexican American twins Carolina (Carol) and Juan Ángel (Johnny) Garza learn that their mom has suddenly gone missing, they set out to find her—and their lives are forever changed. After their grieving father ships them off to relatives in Mexico, they discover that, not only is their mom a nagual, a shapeshifter—but they are naguales as well.

Hurriedly schooled by their experiences, Johnny and Carol find out that twin naguales come along only once in a millennium, and, as such, they are capable of wielding “savage magic” that not even the gods can control. Their education is quick and experiential: In order to find and rescue their mother, they must descend into the Aztec underworld and face and defeat all of the supernatural powers that confront them—in each of its nine levels.

As the twins careen between worlds, Bowles keeps his readers riveted from beginning to end. But The Smoking Mirror is more than just a page-flipper. Rather, middle readers will go back and forth, quickly reading to find out what happens next—and rereading to experience the previous episode again. 

Carol and Johnny are best friends and despite lots of back-and-forth middle-school snark, the two have each other’s back:

Carol’s concern (that Johnny would overestimate his own abilities) took a backseat as the beating of dozens of massive wings came from all around them. A group of fire-breathing flying serpents was converging on them, presumably furious at what the twins had done to their master. Johnny turned and flew backwards, raising the shield with his talons to deflect their flaming attacks. Carol ducked and weaved as she flew, narrowly avoiding streams of fire. When a wyrm would get too close, she’d blast it from the sky with her xoxal-enhanced blaze…. Five deserts down. Four more to go.

In the worlds of The Smoking Mirror, middle readers will discern that the battles are not between “good” and “evil.” Rather, they’re between “order” and “chaos”—and, as Carol and Johnny battle cucuys and Mesoamerican deities, they must utilize their new-found abilities to stop the forces of chaos from ending the world. But ultimately, it’s their love for each other—and for their mother—that pulls them through.

The cover illustration by Charlene Bowles (the author’s daughter) is perfect. Here, the two children, confronted by Tezcatlipoca, the enormous, snarling, three-pawed jaguar emerging out of the smoking obsidian mirror—brother and enemy of Quetzalcoatl—are given a choice that tests their love for each other and for their mother, and their power to help destroy the world. Middle readers will be mesmerized by this image long after they’ve finished the book.

Bowles’ chapter-by-chapter “guide to Spanish words, phrases and songs” is a collection of Tex-Mex Spanish that contains regional dialects, accents and terminology—and some of it is a stand-alone hoot. In addition to offering translations, Bowles effortlessly code-switches contemporary Tex-Mex phraseology into a sort-of English equivalent that resonates with middle-graders without necessarily offending their parents or teachers. And for a wealth of information and ideas, adults may also delve into Bowles’ extensive teaching guide (http://davidbowles.us/books/author/mg-ya/garza-twins/teaching-resources-for-the-smoking-mirror/)

In The Smoking Mirror, past becomes present as myth careens into reality and a sister and brother’s impassioned search for their mother drives them to a heroism they never could have imagined. Middle readers—even those who might not initially “get” all the historical and cultural references and nuances the first time around—will be unable to put it down. And they will look forward to Book Two. The Smoking Mirror: Garza Twins, Book One is a  well-deserved Pura Belpré Prize winner.

*Highly recommended for all home, classroom and library collections.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 10/21/20)

That Girl on TV Could Be Me!: The Journey of a Latina News Anchor / ¡Yo Podría Ser Esa Chica el la Tele! El Camino de una Noticiera Latina

author: Leticia Ordaz
translator: Leticia Ordaz
illustrator: Juan Calle
Immedium,  2020
grades 2-4 
Mexican American

Leticia Ordaz remembers when, as a young girl, she watched the news and began to question why no one on TV looked like her. With encouragement from her hard-working parents—who had left school after the sixth grade in Michoacán, Mexico, to support their families; and later, had immigrated here to give their own children a better life—Leticia begins to imagine that she could realize her dreams and work as a newscaster.

Colombian illustrator Juan Calle’s brightly colored manga-influenced art (which has been trending with young people for years), digitally “painted” in Photoshop, transports the audience into the story. His illustration on the inside front cover, for instance, shows young Leticia, looking out at the reader. She holds a blank notebook and her expression radiates confidence. A sketch of a microphone floats nearby. Young readers know from the beginning that Leticia’s story has a positive ending. 

But it’s the images of Leticia’s family’s journey and hard work to encourage their children and give them a good life that especially stand out. In one, the family sits around a tiny dinner table as Papá, in work shirt and cap, tells the children stories about the difficulty of farm labor in Michoacán. 

In other images, Leticia tells readers about her timidity, her practicing to read out loud in front of the mirror at home, graduating from high school and enrolling at Sacramento State, breaking into broadcasting through an internship at a local news station, and how her dream career slowly unfolds. 

Here is Leticia accompanying reporters to snowstorms, practicing “standups” in rainstorms, covering Cowboy Poetry Day, becoming wrapped up by a snake at a country fair, being attacked by mosquitoes in an almond orchard, and covering the most destructive fire in California’s history. The first in her family to graduate from college, Leticia learns on the job to write, shoot and produce her own stories and on-air interviews. And when her dream job in Bakersfield opens up, she is home!

Ordaz’s non-literal Spanish translation is appealing. It’s the way people actually talk in their own languages. For instance, one of Leticia’s mentors, Lois Hart, tells the astonished young woman (in English):

“This is a tough business, and the starting pay is peanuts. On your first job you’ll have to be a one-man band, carry your own camera, and edit your own stories.”

In Spanish, Lois Hart’s warning is this: 

“Este es un negocio difícil y el sueldo inicial es apenas nada. En tú primer trabajo tendrás que hacer todo tú sola, llevar tu propia cámera y editar tus propios reportajes.” (“This is a tough business and the starting salary is hardly anything. In your first job you will have to do everything yourself, bring your own camera and edit your own reports.”)

Of course, Leticia Ordaz’s story is about overcoming obstacles. But, more than this, it’s about knowing who you are, acknowledging what you come from, and—with love and support from family and community—you just might go on to realize your dreams. 

*Highly recommended for all home, classroom and library collections. 

—Beverly Slapin

(published 9/19/20)