On the cover, a tiny green coquí sits on the floor in front of an exuberant, multiethnic group of young children. All eyes are focused on the new librarian, Pura Belpré, as she performs traditional Puerto Rican stories. They are stories she had learned as a child from her Abuela, and, since they had not been published, she transmits them as her Abuela did. In the upper corners, Perez the Mouse and Martina, the beautiful cockroach who loves him in one of Belpre’s stories—are also watching her perform.
Before Pura Belpré arrived in Harlem, during “storytimes” in public libraries full of books for children, librarians showed the books and read the stories. But there were no storybooks for children from Puerto Rico and none in Spanish. So the young librarian traveled the city, from Harlem to the Bronx to the Lower East Side, lighting her storytelling candle and performing her stories in Spanish and English. Hers may have been the first of library “storytimes” without books.
Magaly Morales’ bright, digital full-color illustrations—including the title’s lettering—are joyous and inviting. On an interior double-page spread, an exuberant Pura practices grand gestures while she dances across the pages and sings to the animals in her stories—who join her. On another page, her characters watch from above as children surround her.
When the young librarian does not see Puerto Rican children in the library, she goes into the barrio to recruit. A double-page spread shows Pura in a park where Puerto Rican children are playing. Across the two pages, she calls out to them: “¡CUENTOS!”
That Pura’s Cuentos contains words and phrases—and some dialog—in untranslated Spanish, affirms the language and honors young Spanish-speaking readers as well. In one spread, an exhilarated young girl hands a stack of books to her mom and tells her, “¡Nos contó historias de Puerto Rico!”
In this country, a large percentage of the population (roughly 25%) speaks Spanish and, like Pura Belpré herself, Pimentel acknowledges and affirms—and targets—her audience of Spanish-speaking readers and their cultures. Like Pura Belpré, she wants them to go to the library and read and learn more. As well, she pushes young readers who do not speak Spanish to gather the contextual cues to understand what has been said without having been told.
On the next-to-final spread,—with a coquí on her shoulder and a crowing gallo at her side, Pura is writing the story of Perez and Martina. To her right, Perez and Martina themselves are dancing on the completed pages:
Abuela’s story… Pura’s story … the children’s story … becomes a book. Because Pura Belpré always knew that many stories worth telling aren’t in books. Not yet.
Many of Pura Belpré’s cuentos are still in print, others are anthologized, and still others are worth a search.
* Highly recommended for all home, classroom and library collections.
—Beverly Slapin
(published 6/19/2021)
[Note: The Pura Belpré Award, established in 1996, is presented annually to “a Latino / Latina writer and illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth.”]
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