Babies Nurse / Así alimentan los bebés

author: Phoebe Fox

translator (poetry): Zahydée Gonzalez, 

Victory Productions

translator (back matter): The Spanish Group

illustrator: Jim Fox 

Platypus Media, 2018 

preschool-grade 2

In this cross-species tribute to mothering and motherhood, youngest readers and listeners will find short, rhyming poems in English and Spanish that partner with luminous artwork. The diverse cast of mammal moms and their young includes horses, tigers, monkeys, seals, zebras, dogs, pandas, bats, polar bears, cats, deer, dolphins, and humans. 

Fox’s soft, evocative watercolor-and-pencil portraits, each of a particular mammal mom and her young in their natural environments—on the ground, in the snow, in a glade, underwater, on 

a tree, upside down, on the beach—are gentle and quiet, effectively complementing the text and communicating to young readers the tenderness of the nursing experience. The single-page illustrations work better than those on the double-page spreads, which, unfortunately, often result in gutter loss. 

In outstanding examples of “show, don’t tell,” each quatrain (abcb) in English followed by its Spanish counterpart is as soothing and warm as the art accompanying it. Although some of English text seems a little forced, for the most part it’s very good. And rather than an attempt to mimic the English, Zahydée Gonzalez’ beautiful Spanish interpretations of the artwork maintain their own rhythm and syntax, independently showing the story of each painting. Her technique recognizes and honors young hablantes and their parents and teachers.

For older readers of English only, the back matter (“Did You Know? / ¿Sabías?”) is informative and enjoyable. Among other things, they will discover that: horses can’t vomit or burp, tigers can’t purr, and monkeys hold hands when they groom each other. However, it’s unfortunate that the Spanish contains numerous errors. For instance, while the English text states that seals can  hold their breath and sleep under water “by resting half their brain at a time,” the Spanish translation states that they do this by “adormeciendo una mitad del cerebro a la vez” (numbing one half of the brain at a time). “Resting” would be “descansando.”

In this form, the back matter is useless for older readers who are hablantes and / or English speakers who want to become fluent in Spanish. This issue places an additional burden on Spanish-speaking teachers, who would have to end the book on page 21 and verbally modify the text or summarize the information in the back matter.

Any book—especially one for children—that’s presented as bilingual or multilingual must be faithful to both or all of the languages. If and when the Spanish errors in the back matter are corrected, Babies Nurse / Así se alimentan los bebés will be highly recommended. But as it is now, we can’t in good conscience recommend it. 

—Beverly Slapin

(published 9/5/19)

Míl gracias a mis amigas y colegas, María Cárdenas y Judy Zalazar Drummond. 

Dream Carver

author: Diana Cohn

illustrator: Amy Córdova

Chronicle Books, 2002

grades 1-3 

Maya

Beginning with a quote from Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe about following one’s dream (the author probably couldn’t find anything by Octavio Paz), Cohen has envisioned a picture book about a little boy in a small Mexican village who—following his dream—defies his father and breaks with his family’s generations-old tradition of carving juguetes, tiny wood animals for sale. Instead, he secretly begins to create brightly painted wood figures carved from copal, using the natural shapes of the copal to inspire the carvings. Of course, these figures become a great hit at the fiesta that follows, and the boy wins over the entire village, including his father, who asks that the little boy teach him “a new way to carve!”

The idea for Dream Carver, Cohen writes, was inspired by Manuel Jiménez, who is said to have been the “inventor” of this art form. But, whether one artist or a handful of artists began this relatively new folk-art phenomenon, it was not begun by a Mexican child in defiance of his father. And Mexican fathers do not generally reprimand their young children for “foolish dreams.” This book is culturally dishonest. And, since the Mexican people regard the Zapotec and Mixtec structures in Oaxaca as sacred, the term “Zapotec ruins” is a misnomer.

Córdova’s intensely colored paintings, rendered in acrylic and colored pencil, situate both the family and their stylized carvings in a contemporary Mexican art form, whose borders beautifully complete each page. But her talent is not enough to save this poorly conceived and poorly written book. Dream Carver is not recommended.

—Beverly Slapin
(published 4/7/13)

Abuelita's Heart

author: Amy Córdova

illustrator: Amy Córdova

Simon & Schuster, 1997

kindergarten-grade 3 

Mexican American, Diné

Just before she is to return to the city with her parents, a young girl spends the day with her abuelita, exploring river and canyon areas, listening to stories about medicine plants, and, finally, visiting the “Cave of the Heart,” high on whose wall is carved a heart, “the greatest healer on Earth.” This is “Abuelita’s Heart,” the greatest knowledge she has to pass on to her granddaughter.

Here are some of the problems with Abuelita’s Heart:

(1) The writing is vague and New Age-y. This is what Abuelita tells her granddaughter about the heart carved on the wall of the "Cave of the Heart":

See how the spirals of the heart reach out, giving themselves one to the other? It is by reaching out to one another that we, too, create something beautiful to last throughout the ages. No matter where life leads you … if you follow the heart your path will be one of wonder.

(2) The writing is also self-conscious, with clichéd “Indian” metaphors. The young girl says, for instance, “My moccasins pat the ground in soft drumbeats,” and, “My Abuelita lives in a land the color of sunset, where each day the great sky herds woolly clouds over the mountains to far-off pastures.”

(3) The dialogue is forced, with English phrases immediately followed by literal Spanish translations, or vice versa: “Abuelita says, ‘The earth is enchanted here. La tierra está encantada aquí.’” The first issue with this kind of unimaginative writing is that no one talks like this. If the story were about a grandma’s teaching Spanish to her English-speaking granddaughter, maybe they would communicate back and forth, in Spanish and English, but this is not what’s happening here.

Secondly, literal translations are often clumsy and confusing to Spanish-speaking children. In the case of “The earth is enchanted here,” the Spanish would more likely be, “Aquí está la tierra encantada,” which means that this spot right here is enchanted. In another example, the child greets Abuelita’s dog: “Hola, perrita, mi amigita [sic]. Hello, little dog, my dear friend. Como estás hoy día? How are you today?” Again, the Spanish would more likely be: “Hola, perrita. ¿Como estás?”

(4) And this is curious: It appears that Abuelita is Diné (Navajo): her hair is rolled and tied in a hairstyle known as a tsiiyéél, she’s wearing a chunky turquoise-and-silver bracelet, and there’s a rug on the wall that’s reminiscent of a contemporary Diné “Tree of Life” design. Yet, Abuelita lives in an adobe house rather than a hogan and speaks only Spanish and English. And, there are no sheep. And, she sprinkles blue cornmeal—rather than blue corn pollen, as Navajos do—as a thank-offering to Mother Earth.

(5) Although Córdova’s art is rendered in mixed media on a subdued palette that evokes the high desert, the facial features of the little girl and her grandma change from page to page, and the child appears to be a different height with each picture as well. It’s disconcerting. Also disconcerting is the owl perched in a tree next to the doorway in the canyon wall that Abuelita and child are about to enter. If Abuelita actually were Diné and she saw that owl, she’d take her granddaughter and beat a trail out of there!

Poorly written and illustrated, heavy on trite metaphor and New Age jargon, and full of incorrect cultural markers, Abuelita’s Heart is not recommended.

—Beverly Slapin
(published 4/6/13)