How Do You Say? / ¿Cómo se dice?

author: Angela Domínguez

illustrator: Angela Domínguez 

Henry Holt, 2016 

preschool-up

When two young giraffes—one who speaks Spanish and one who speaks English—discover each other at an acacia tree that provides a “delicious! / ¡sabrosa!” leafy meal for both of them and they can share water from the same small pond as well, they become instant friends. On elegantly designed double-page spreads that contain lots of white space—and a total of 24 words—the two see the tree (“Food!” / “¡Comida!”) hesitantly meet (“Hello?” / “¿Hola?”), discover everything they have in common, and, after their feast and a lively fiesta, they, of course, join together for a siesta. This last spread contains no white space, just the two giraffe bodies, leaning into each other amid a tangle of balloons, blissfully asleep.

Domínguez told me that her artwork in How Do You Say? is similar to her Lola Levine covers. For the giraffes, she began with pencil sketches on illustration board, on top of which she then glued tissue paper and digitally added layers of color. She painted the leaves, balloons and party hats with gouache and marker on illustration board, and then digitally “cleaned up” these images as well. An imaginative use of limited text, white space, and contrasting colors makes this sweet little book beyond adorable. 

Each double-page spread highlights the two young animals—or parts of them—as they meet, greet, and celebrate each other and their world. How Do You Say? / ¿Cómo se dice? is a gentle, sweet little book with a light-hearted message about similarities, differences and friendships that cross cultural barriers that are, after all, imaginary. Indeed, the youngest hablantes who may be learning English, bilingual kids, and children who don’t speak Spanish (yet) will love this—maybe as a group in a conversation about friendship during snack time and just before nap time. As Domínguez writes on the inside front jacket, “We may speak different languages, but friendship is universal!” / “¡Podemos hablar differentes idiomas, pero la amistad es universal!” Highly recommended.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 9/3/17)

María Had a Little Llama / María Tenía una Llamita

author: Angela Domínguez

illustrator: Angela Domínguez

translator: Angela Domínguez

Henry Holt, 2013 

preschool-grade 2 

Peruvian

Here, Domínguez brings 19th-Century American schoolteacher, Sarah Josepha Hale’s nursery rhyme, “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” into modern-day Peru, where “Mary” becomes “María” and her faithful lamb is a llamita. Beautifully and conscientiously executed in intention, art and translation, María Had a Little Llama / María Tenía una Llamita is a picture book that “shows” rather than “tells” a particular child’s world that in some ways is the same as, and in other ways is different from, those of children who may be reading it.

María is an Inca-Peruvian girl who loves her pet llama and her pet llama loves her—so much so that, while the other llamas (and a few sheep as well) trot off the other way, Maria’s llamita follows her to school. The children are amused of course, but her beloved llama has to wait patiently outside (rules, you know), while the teacher explains the close relationship between the girl and her pet.

While the English text follows Hale’s original poem word for word, Domínguez’s Spanish translation is conversational and charming, and keeps a rhythm that will appeal to hablantes and young bilingual readers as well. 

Effectively employing mixed media consisting of watercolor, gouache, inks and colored pencil on an earthy palette, Domínguez reserves the more opaque inks and gouaches to center María and her bright red hat—as well as her solid white llama—while using the flatter watercolors for the backgrounds. This works especially well, for instance, in depicting the vast blue-green Andes mountains on all of the spreads that show the land.

Domînguez presents physical and cultural details in a subtle, organic way. As an Inca-Peruvian child, Marîa’s traditional outfit consists of a plain woolen poncho and skirt, a bright red chullo (a woolen cone-shaped hat with earflaps), and a pair of ojotas (sandals made from recycled tires). On her way to school, she also carries a bright purple cloth bookbag on her back. In the classroom, María’s teacher wears a traditional embroidered Quecha jobona (wool jacket) and montera (basket-hat). She also wears eyeglasses. On her desk are a stack of books and a globe, while the children sit at desks and write on paper with pencils. While these are important visual cues for young readers in the US to absorb, Domínguez’s illustrations do not depict cultural anomalies. Rather, they show an everyday mix of old and new in a rural Peruvian village.

Domínguez’s careful attention to detail shows throughout. Here are children and adults in a mixed-grade classroom who vary in age, dress and complexion tones. Here is María’s home village, with tile-roofed houses and an open-air marketplace. Here are the animals—llamas and sheep, free and corralled—of different sizes, shapes and colors. Here is a group of musicians in the background, who vary in ethnicity, gender and body types.

Some of my favorite illustrations: 

María’s llama is patiently waiting outside—“But still he waited near and lingered patiently about” / “Pero ella se quedó cerca esperando pacientemente…”—sitting on the grass, ever smiling as llamas do, while clocks float in the background to mark the slow passage of time. 

Domínguez depicts “everywhere” (“And everywhere that María went, the llama was sure to go” / “Y a donde María iba, la llama la seguía”) as a roughly drawn map of Peru that focuses on the Inca Trail: the Andes, Cuzco, the rivers and the sacred Machu Picchu. This spread spans the top half, while the bottom half shows María and her llamita, always together. This is María’s world. This is everywhere.

The final spread opens to a scene of llamas looking on from inside a corral as musicians play traditional musical instruments, which include quena (flute), guitarrón, and arpa indígena (harp); and children, with smaller instruments, wave. In the background are the Andes and forefronted is María, playing her zampoña (pan pipe) and dancing, her llamita dancing beside her. Some of the children are wearing contemporary clothing and some are dressed traditionally; their hairstyles as well reflect their ethnic and cultural mixes. Everyone is smiling, llamas included. It’s a scene of pure joy, one to which young readers will keep returning. 

A well-deserved Pure Belpré Honor Book, María Had a Little Llama / María Tenía una Llamita is highly recommended.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 7/11/17)

Sing, Don’t Cry

author: Angela Domínguez 

illustrator: Angela Domínguez 

Henry Holt, 2017 

preschool-up

Mexican, Mexican American

Ay, ay, ay, ay.

canta y no llores.

porque cantando se alegran,

cielito lindo, los corazones.

Ay, ay, ay, ay.

sing and don’t cry.

because singing gladdens

the heart, sweet lovely one.

When people think of a “Mexican” song, “Cielito Lindo" is one of the first that comes to mind. It’s a positive song, a unifying song, a song of hope and a new morning.“Cielito Lindo” goes back to the 1880s and remains the single most popular mariachi song in Mexico. In restaurants, mariachis enter singing it, and people stop eating and, swaying back and forth, sing the refrain.

My friend and colleague, Judy Zalazar Drummond, told me that her uncle had been a mariachi, and that “Cielito Lindo” was always the song that brought everyone together. She remembers her mother’s singing it all the time and, in Mexico, “someone always picked up the guitar and played it.” It’s an easy song and was the first song she learned as a child. It’s a pretty song, she told me, and always gave her a good feeling.

Domínguez’s story, she writes, was inspired by the refrain in “Cielito Lindo” and by her mariachi grandfather, who turned to music after a serious childhood accident. She centers this poignant story—narrated by a child who fondly remembers Abuelo and the lessons he taught his grandchildren during his annual visits from Mexico—on the healing powers of song and a positive outlook and love of family and community. 

Her artwork—pencil drawings on tissue paper on illustration board, digitally colored in Photoshop—beautifully complements the story’s gentleness. There are two different, both calmly subdued, palettes here: more sepia tones for  “past memories” and slightly brighter, mostly greens, blues, browns and yellows for “present moments.” And I’m impressed as usual by Domínguez’s use of varied skin tones and hair colors, as well as rich details such as bricks on buildings, leaves on trees, a banner of papel picado fluttering in the breeze, the fabric of a couch and balls of yarn in a basket. 

Domínguez has made sure that, although she doesn’t center Abuelo’s disability (he probably would not have wanted her to), it’s clear that it changed his life. So, in four illustrations placed throughout, is a story within the story. The first three are rendered in sepia tones, representing the past. Here is a worried mom, standing over her child’s bed. He is in pain. Here is the child, viewed from behind, leaning on crutches and looking out the window. His friends are waving to him, but he can’t go out. Here is a young man, joyfully singing and playing his guitar. A crutch leans against the couch. And finally, in full color, here is an older man—Abuelo—standing up, exuberantly holding his guitar and smiling at his grandchildren. They are hugging him and his arms are open wide in an exchange of love. 

Domínguez’ spare text virtually frames all of her illustrations and hints at their content: “Some things may be lost forever / it’s true.” / “But maybe that makes room / for new and wonderful / things to be found.” This story showing technique cannot help but engage young readers and listeners and encourage them to imagine, and maybe share their own stories. 

And finally, there’s this:

“When you are misunderstood,

and when people are unkind,

remember—sing, don’t cry,

even if it is only in your soul.”

There is one problem—and it’s major: Domínguez’s lovely story and beautiful art, informed by a Mexican song, about a Mexican American family with a Mexican abuelo who is a mariachi, was published in an English-only format. It certainly should have been bilingual, and I hope that the next printing will be. In the meanwhile, just as a stopgap, perhaps Domínguez and/or the publisher will insert a translation into each book as it comes off the press. Nevertheless, Sing, Don’t Cry is highly recommended.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 6/7/17)

Pablo Neruda: Poet of the People

author: Monica Brown
illustrator: Julie Paschkis
Henry Holt, 2011
kindergarten-up
Chilean

“Once there was a little boy named Neftalí, who loved wild things wildly and quiet things quietly,” this story begins. “From the moment he could talk, Neftalí surrounded himself with words that whirled and swirled...” With spare, honest prose and luminous illustrations—and with neither polemic nor dilution—Monica Brown and Julie Paschkis have condensed the essential elements of Pablo Neruda’s life to create an amazing biography for the youngest readers and listeners, a picture book that Neruda himself would surely have loved.

Neftalí’s childhood fascination with all that surrounded him—stones, shells, trees, flowers, “beetles and birds’ eggs and tall ferns that dripped water like tears”—and, especially, written and spoken words—became part of what made Pablo Neruda a poet.

But beautiful things were not all that Neruda saw. As a young adult, he saw people struggling to survive; he saw “coal miners working dangerous jobs for little money.” As Neruda “joined those who fought for justice and wrote poems to honor all workers who struggled for freedom,” he was transformed into a “poet of the people,” whose talent and passion and courage spoke to and for poor and working people in Chile and the world.

All of this is contained in Brown’s narrative, including a mention of what became the beginnings of a fascist transformation that caused Neruda to flee his beloved country. (Neruda died soon after a US-backed military coup assassinated his close friend, Salvador Allende, replacing him with the brutal dictator, Augusto Pinochet.)

Paschkis’s exquisite watercolor paintings of Neftalí’s development—from a child daydreaming of colors, seasons and animals into an accomplished poet writing of hunger, struggle and revolution—complement Brown’s text. Although the text is not bilingual (as I would have wished), the art certainly is. Bright, vividly colored ribbons of words, in Spanish and English—and sometimes in other languages, too—depicting both beauty and struggle, whirl and swirl around each page. On a Chilean beach, ribbons of blues and greens read, “sonrisa,” “salto,” “playa,” “bailando,” “salud.” On the flags of protestors, red ribbons proclaim, “obreros,” “liberación,” “aprender,” “remember,” “defend.” In a dark coal mine, gray ribbons read, “pobreza,” “nunca,” “never,” “hungry,” “angry.” When Neruda is forced into exile, ribbons read, “patria,” “peril,” “disappear,” “peligro,” “hidden.”

In an author’s note, Brown gives more information about Neruda’s life and work; and there is a resource page for further research. Effective companion texts would be Pam Muñoz Ryan’s The Dreamer, along with Antonio Skármeta’s The Composition, about a child’s facing fascism in his country. Both titles are reviewed on this blog.

Together, Brown and Pashkis have created a stunning mosaic—in words and art—of the revolutionary genius Pablo Neruda’s life and work. Pablo Neruda: Poet of the People is highly recommended.

—Beverly Slapin
(published 11/8/13)

Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba

author: Margarita Engle

Henry Holt, 2009

grades 7-up 

Cuban

Newbery Honor-winning poet Margarita Engle perks up her readers’ interests with Tropical Secrets, her third well-researched historical-fiction novel written in simple, colorful verse. She immerses imaginary characters into a true, little known, horrific, anti-Semitic situation that took place in Cuba during World War II. The poems, told in first-person by three characters, focus on the period between June 1939 and April 1942.

The book begins with Daniel, a 13-year-old Jewish boy whose parents have sent to “the Americas” to save him from the Nazi Holocaust. First his ship sails to the US and then to Canada, but both countries turn the refugees away at the harbor. If Cuba does not/ allow us to land,/ will we be sent back/ to Germany’s/ shattered night? Cuba lets them land, and Daniel begins to struggle with language (I promise myself that I will never/ let anyone change the rhythm/of my name.), culture and loneliness.

Paloma, a Cuban 13-year-old who feels for the sad strangers, befriends Daniel, but her father doesn’t have her charitable heart. Rather, he takes advantage of refugees: No bribe, no visa.

David, an elderly Russian ice cream seller, becomes mentor to both Paloma and Daniel. Here Engel could have done better. Although David’s voice is older and wiser than Daniel’s, it’s confusing to the reader when names start with the same two letters.

Yet the characters are well developed, the story is intriguing, and the setting authentically transporting the reader to the true heart of Havana.           

Daniel from the ship: This tropical heat/ is a weight in the sky/ crushing my breath.

Daniel speaking of David: He speaks to me with his hands dancing/ and his voice musical, just like the islanders/ who sound like chattering/ wild birds.

Daniel speaking about Havana: The city of Havana is never quiet./ Sleep is impossible—there are always/ the drums of passing footsteps/ and the horns of traffic/ and choirs of dogs barking;/ and orchestra of vendors singing/ and neighbors laughing/ and children fighting.

The historical details don’t stop with the refugees, some of whom had a “J” for Jew stamped on their passports. Through Paloma, we learn that orphan boys were taken to a Hershey ranch in the US and that in Cuba an orphan could find a home with any adult who happened to share the same name. And when I asked her why the carnival was in the summer and not before Lent, as it is in other Latin American countries, Engle told me: “In Cuba, the biggest carnival is after the sugar harvest. Originally, this was to avoid giving slaves time off. After the revolution, with highly publicized harvest quotas, the purpose was similar, to avoid giving time off during the busy season. Life is strange.”

Life may be strange, but Margarita Engle knows Cuban history and, in Tropical Secrets, she shares what otherwise we would have not learned. Tropical Secrets is highly recommended. 

 —Carmen T. Bernier-Grand
(published 4/8/13)