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I Love Saturdays y domingos


author: Alma Flor Ada
illustrator: Elivia Savadier
Atheneum/ Simon & Schuster, 2002
preschool-grade 3 
Mexican American

In this winner of an Américas Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature, a little girl recounts her weekend visits with her grandparents: Saturdays with her father’s English-speaking European American parents and Sundays with her mother’s Spanish-speaking Mexican American parents. With her Saturday visits illustrated and described on the left of each spread y los domingos en la derecha, this youngster—as bilingual children do—effortlessly code-switches. Although the author and illustrator have set the Spanish words and phrases in a clear context so that young English-speaking readers can extrapolate their meanings, some of the writing remains clunky. For instance, “Abuelita is very proud of her Indian blood because the Indians really know how to love the land.”

Savadier’s bright watercolor cartoon illustrations show the joy of the little girl’s weekends. Recommended.

—Beverly Slapin
(published 4/7/13)

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