Amelia’s Road // Lights on the River

author: Linda Jacobs Altman
illustrator: Enrique O. Sanchez
Lee & Low, 1993
kindergarten-grade 3
Mexican American
















author: Jane Resh Thomas

illustrator: Michael Dooling

Hyperion, 1994

grades 2-4 

Mexican, Mexican American

Since 1960, the terrible conditions of migrant agricultural workers in this country have been public knowledge.[1] Today, hundreds of thousands of children in the US work in agriculture[2] and, since César Chávez and Dolores Huerta founded the United Farm Workers in 1962, the organization has exposed and campaigned against the dangers of agricultural labor, particularly to child workers.

It’s not required for a picture book about a tough subject to overwhelm young readers. But children are capable of complex thinking, and empathy comes from understanding one’s own life and the lives and struggles of others. There are wonderful picture books, for instance, about the struggles of agricultural workers for human rights.[3] It can be done.

The story of families who are migrant farm workers is the focus of two children’s picture books, both published in the early 1990s. But Amelia’s Road and Lights on the River are very different from each other in the ways that each author relates the issues. One encourages empathy and discussion; the other encourages only pity.

Every time Amelia Luisa Martinez’s father picks up a map, it means the family has to move again, to follow the ripening crops. The child longs for a place she can call home, where the teacher knows her name, where she has friends, where her family doesn’t have to “mark all the important occasions of life by the never-ending rhythms of harvest.” One day after her morning’s work, Amelia hurries off to school. Here, she meets Mrs. Ramos, who introduces her to the other children and, when Amelia draws a picture of a house with a large tree in the yard, gives her a red star. When Amelia takes a different road back from school, she sees a large tree just like the one she has drawn, and feels connected to this tree and this place. Although Amelia and her family have to move on, she gives the tree a gift that ensures that she will return. Amelia has set down roots; for now, this is her road, this is her place. Sanchez’s acrylic-on-canvas paintings, on a palette of rich, bright, colors, show a loving family, working hard and being together. Amelia’s Road will resonate with young readers, especially those who work in the fields. Highly recommended.

In Lights on the River, young Teresa doesn’t work and doesn’t go to school—her only job is to take care of the younger children while her family toils among the cucumber vines nearby. Here, under a shade tree, she cuddles her doll and dreams of the happy times, spending Christmas Eve with her grandmother in “Mexico, far away,” where there is family, music and plenty to eat. Moving from camp to camp, Teresa and her family are alternately exhausted, sad, miserable, humiliated, enraged, and resigned to their pitiful existence. “We carry our house on our backs,” Teresa’s mother sighs.

At one farm, Teresa’s family is forced to live in a chicken coop with two dirty mattresses, an outside pump and a filthy outhouse. When she accepts a chocolate-chip cookie from the “woman farmer” and sees the contrast between her life and that of the farmer’s family, “her throat was so full of anger that the cookie stuck.” For Teresa, this contrast drives home the hopelessness of the Mexican family’s lives, and fuels both her mother’s silent rage and Teresa’s impossible dreams.

Papi and Gabriel had planted an orchard of their own. Mami ran a café with screened doors and curtains at the windows, where Teresa served beans and chicken and chocolate-chip cookies….Nobody’s stomach growled with hunger. And every night Teresa rested in Abuela’s dooryard with the people she loved, listening to Papi’s guitar.

As Teresa’s mother lights the luminaria candle, a present from her grandmother—“Abuela gave us the sand and the light to keep the village alive in our hearts,” Teresa “listened to Papi’s song as Mami pulled her into her lap, the place that was always home.”

In stark contrast to Sanchez’s artwork in Amelia’s Road, Dooling’s dreary oil paintings, on a palette of mostly dark browns and greens, complement the dreary text of Lights on the River. 

Thomas’ writing is superficial and trite, and full of cultural errors. According to her author’s note, she “wrote this story more than forty years after seeing several migrant farm workers standing at the doorstep of the chicken coop where they were housed on a Michigan farm. The people I saw as a child were Mexican.” It wouldn’t be a stretch to opine that the pity she felt as a child remained when she wrote Lights on the River. Mexican children of migrant agricultural workers deserve much more than this. Not recommended.

—Beverly Slapin
(published 2/17/14)

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[1] On the day after Thanksgiving in 1960, “CBS Reports” aired a documentary presented by broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow. Called “Harvest of Shame,” it brought public attention to the horrible conditions of migrant agricultural workers in the US.

[2] See, for instance, Human Rights Watch, “Labor Department Abandons Child Farm Workers” (http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/05/07/labor-department-abandons-child-farmworkers).

[3] See, for instance, the reviews of César: ¡Sí, Se Puede! Yes, We Can! by Carmen T. Bernier-Grand, Gathering the Sun: An Alphabet in Spanish and English, by Alma Flor Ada and Rosa Zubizarreta, and Harvesting Hope: The Story of César Chávez by Kathleen Krull.

When This World Was New

author: D.H. Figueredo

illustrator: Enrique O. Sanchez

Lee & Low, 1999

kindergarten-grade 4 

Cuban American

Years ago, I used to teach cultural universals by showing young children how to research their own and each other’s cultures. They’d talk about what they’d like to find out about their parents: What kinds of games did they play? What games did their parents and grandparents play in the countries they came from? We’d also research things, such as what kind of work their relatives did, what languages they spoke, what foods they liked to eat. Initially, the children would find out the similarities and differences between themselves and their older relatives and their classmates—and that people are generally more similar than different. Ultimately, this kind of research makes it easier to study peoples who are very different from theirs, and allows them to put these differences into a social and cultural context.

Every culture has things that they do that are similar to every other culture. When you bring together children from various cultures—and encourage them to talk about their cultures—they find much more commonality than difference.

None of this happens in When This World Was New. Here, a young boy from a Caribbean island somewhere where Spanish is spoken emigrates with his mother and father to somewhere else where English is spoken. They meet the boy’s uncle, who sets them up in an apartment, gives them food for a week, and finds the father a job in a factory. This new place has snow. This child has never seen snow before, and he doesn’t know how to walk on ice. But, with his father’s help, the boy’s experience with the snow gives him confidence. The unstated moral is that your circumstances may change but things will probably work out.

A perusal of the back matter, CIP data and dedication—none of which children will see—reveal that the family has emigrated from Cuba to New York.

When This World Was New is a “universal” story, but there is no culture, other than the family speaks Spanish. In an attempt to tell a universal story about moving, the author disappears the social and cultural contexts, and leaves young readers with questions: Where is this child from? Where is the rest of his family? Why did he leave his country of origin? Why is he now in the US? How will he do in school? Young readers who have migrated or emigrated here might have additional questions: How come it was so easy to find plenty of food, a nice place to live and a good job?

This story doesn’t require, or even encourage, any complex thinking. But young children have complex lives and are capable of understanding complexity in other people’s lives. And that’s how you foster compassion: by showing other people’s lives in a way that children can relate to—without taking away the story.

Rather, by creating a “universal” story, the author ignores all the issues and the lived realities that often confront migrant and immigrant children. There’s no culture shock because there’s no culture, only the shock. When This World Was New is as bland as Pablum, but less nourishing. Although I like Sanchez’s soft acrylic paintings, I can’t recommend this book.

—Donna Amador
(published 4/9/13)

Lupe & Me

author: Elizabeth Spurr

illustrator: Enrique O. Sanchez

Gulliver / Harcourt Brace, 1995

grades 1-3 

Mexican

This first chapter book tells of the relationship that develops between seven-year-old Susan and 16-year-old Lupe, who has been hired to take care of her and the house while her mother works. According to Susan, Lupe, who has recently arrived from Mexico,

always sang while she worked. She loved all our appliances—the dishwasher, the washer and dryer, the attachments for the vacuum cleaner. She worked hard, scrubbing and polishing, dusting and sweeping, and carrying out mountains of trash. Until, finally, our home sparkled like her eyes when she said, "¡Ah, bueno! Muy limpia."

Lupe teaches Susan some Spanish and the intricacies of shining copper pots and cleaning windows, as well as how to make tortillas and salsa, and craft hats from palm leaves. The two of them hang out on weekdays, and Susan’s friends come over to visit after school as well. Susan also meets Lupe’s aunt and cousins, with whom Lupe stays on weekends. As Susan’s and Lupe’s relationship blossoms, they and Susan’s friends celebrate Susan’s birthday and Christmas; to Susan, “every afternoon seemed like a party.”

One day, Lupe disappears without a trace, and Susan and her mother find that the employment agency has gone out of business and Lupe’s aunt’s house has been deserted as well. Susan worries:

For days I sat by the window with my box of worry people. Where was Lupe? I shut my problem in the box, but the worries leaked out. No more walks. No more songs. No more games or giggles. And, worst of all, I had to go back to the sitter.

When they receive a letter from Lupe, Susan’s mother takes out the Spanish-English dictionary and explains to the girl that Lupe has returned to Mexico because she “must have come here illegally” and was “worried about la migra.” As Susan waits for Lupe to obtain her green card and return, she says, “I dust and wash dishes and tidy up to keep our house muy limpia for Lupe’s return.”

In crafting this simple story from a white child’s perspective, the author evades delving into the questions of why people come to the US from Mexico and other parts south to work, why it is so difficult for them to obtain legal status, why they are exploited once they get here, and why they face deportation. By presenting the worst thing as Susan’s having to go back to the sitter, the author trivializes—no, disappears—the issues.

Sanchez’s full-page acrylic-on-canvas paintings, on a palette of soft pastel colors, bring warmth to the text, and are wasted on this story. Not recommended. 

—Beverly Slapin
(published 4/7/13)

Confetti: Poems for Children

author: Pat Mora

illustrator: Enrique O. Sanchez

Lee & Low, 1996

grades 1-4 

Mexican American

In Mora’s short poems, in English with Spanish words seamlessly woven in, a little girl joins birds, ranitas, bees and wind to sing a morning song to the sun, hears all the colors of the sounds, tries to catch the morning wind, watches a carver awakening an animal, “asleep in a piece of wood,” sees dragons and caballitos in the sky, smells cinnamon and anise the panadero’s sweet secrets; remembers the cascarones, filled with confetti; and sits on Abuelita’s lap, where she can listen to cuentos and tell about her day.

Each short poem on the left side is set into a background of bright colors, which are muted into the softer tones and images on the right. Sanchez’s acrylic paintings also reflect both the meanings and rhythms of the poems; together, the words and pictures glow.  

Confetti is a gentle love song to the Southwest, and to Mexican-American family, culture and community. This title is highly recommended.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 4/6/2013)

Abuela's Weave

author: Omar S. Castañeda

author: Omar S. Castañeda 

illustrator: Enrique O. Sanchez

Lee & Low, 1993

grades 2-4

Maya

In the Guatemalan countryside, a grandmother teaches her young granddaughter to weave on a backstrap loom. “Pull back hard,” Abuela says, “make it jolt, so the threads stay close, like family.” As her abuela and Esperanza weave fabric to sell in Guatemala City, Abuela worries because more and more marketable goods are being machine made, and Esperanza worries that customers will be frightened of Abuela because of her prominent facial birthmark and the rumors that she is a witch.

So Abuela pretends to be a woman in mourning. Wrapping “a long black shawl around her shoulders and across her face so that only her eyes appeared to the world,” she walks behind her granddaughter, pretending not to know her. Alone, Esperanza struggles to set up her wares, and many customers stop to admire the large and elaborate tapestry they have made. Soon, everything has been sold, Abuela shows up and takes off her scarf, and the two board the bus together for the ride home.

This story leaves one wondering what its lesson is. If it’s to show how a child is taught to be self-reliant, it doesn’t work: A Mayan grandma would not leave a young child alone, in a crowded marketplace, bartering and taking money. If it’s to show that looks are not important, then why is Abuela ashamed of her birthmark? In Mayan society, a birthmark can sometimes be an omen, but generally it would be accepted for what it is. And if some people think that grandma is a witch, they would be respectful of her. Fixation on unblemished beauty just doesn’t cut it in Guatemala where people who work in sweatshops have accidents, people working in the country get bitten by snakes and insects, and many people get maimed and killed by the death squads. So this birthmark thing appears to be a device to drive the story, which it doesn’t.

Although Sanchez’s vibrant acrylic-on-canvas paintings show real people and reflect the colors and patterns of Mayan textile art, I would rather have seen a warm story of a little girl learning to weave from her grandmother, without all the angst and drama.

Note about words: Although the text is English, it’s understood that the people are speaking either Spanish or a Mayan language or a mixture of both. But just inserting a couple of Spanish words is confusing. For instance, Esperanza might say, “yes, Grandma” or “sí, Abuelita,” but she wouldn’t say, “yes, Abuela.” People live in homes, not huts; the word “hut” refers to a crude or makeshift dwelling, and its use here is demeaning. And is it really necessary to describe Abuela as having “wrinkled old hands”? Not recommended.

—Judy Zalazar Drummond

(published 4/6/13)