Imagine // Imagina

author: Juan Felipe Herrera
translator (Spanish): Georgina Lázaro

illustrator: Lauren Castillo
Candlewick Press: 
Imagine, 2018 
Imagina, 2020

preschool-grade 4 

Mexican

[Note: This review developed as a conversation between María Cárdenas and Beverly Slapin.]

María: This morning I cracked open an egg and was delighted when I discovered two yolks—in the culture of my family, a symbol of good luck and abundance. It transported me back to my childhood and my heritage—of the imagination my family encouraged in me and my siblings.

In considering my own childhood—the traumas and the joys and the things in between—I thought deeply about how important imagination is for all children, but especially for those who are struggling in their lives, who are trying to find a way for things to be better. As a long-time educator, I’ve found that imagination can have the power to redirect children in sometimes-problematic circumstances—to inspire them to see themselves positively.

Beverly: In Herrera’s series of short, evocative, free-verse poems—each of which ends with the whisper, “imagine” or “imagine what you could do”—he welcomes young children into his own life, encouraging them to enlarge their own perspectives and consider their own possibilities. As well, youngsters will learn to embrace compassion, humility and empathy.

Immigrant, migrant and refugee children who are hablantes will easily imagine young Juan Felipe’s life as a farmworker child, helping his mom feed the chickens, walking to the next town to fill a bucket of water, feeling the tadpoles swimming across his hands in a creek—and waving a sad adios to his amiguitos when his family has to move yet again. 

And there’s the incomparable beauty of an unfettered imagination that could belong to every child:

If I let the stars

at night

paint my blanket with milky light

with shapes of hungry birds

while I

slept outside,

imagine what you could do…

María: As I read, I’m also thinking about the desperate and frightened children from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and México. Educators need to be careful to remember where the children are in their lives. Of course, all children need support and love—and also the capacity to imagine themselves in positive circumstances. They need to be encouraged to see themselves outside in the rain or in the sun or in a field or going somewhere they have never been. Or reunited with their families. 

Beverly: As the young hablante enters school in the US—confronted by a language he doesn’t understand but everyone else speaks and reads—young readers born here will catch sight of his difficulties and immigrant young people will recognize them.

As he matures and immerses himself in two languages, the young student collects discarded “gooey and sticky ink pens” whose ink flows “like tiny rivers across soft paper”—and his love of creating poetry emerges:

If I grabbed a handful 

of words

I had never heard and

sprinkled them over a paragraph

so I could write

a magnificent story,

imagine

Talented translator Georgina Lázaro is the perfect partner for Herrera’s short, lyrical verses. Rather than a word-for-word translation, Lázaro’s Spanish version beautifully evokes Hererra’s rhythm and voice in the original. In her expressive and sometimes playful Spanish, Lázaro often switches metaphors, dancing between the two languages. 

Si de niño

recogí flores de manzanilla 

en los prados doblados por el viento

y les susurré a sus caritas vellosas

imagina

And, no less importantly, in translating Herrera’s repeated line, “Imagine what you could do,” Lázaro employs the familiar “tú” rather than the formal “usted.” (“Imagina lo que tú podrías hacer.”)

Lauren Castillo’s luminous artwork, in pen-and-foam monoprint, brings young readers into Herrera’s life. Heavily textured, red-earth tones with dappled light and color in backgrounds suggest the Mexican countryside of Herrera’s childhood. Other spreads contain lots of white space and detail, such as the youngster’s helping his mamá feed the chickens while laundry dries in the sun. 

María: Imagine // Imagina are deep enough—in meaning and symbolism—for older readers as well. For instance, younger readers may not immediately understand the importance of walking to the next town to fill a bucket of water for the whole family, but older readers will. And older kids in the city may not know what it feels like to have tadpoles slipping though their fingers, but younger campesino kids will.

Sometimes young people struggle to imagine good things, or even being in a place that’s not chaotic. In particular, Latinx kids who may be struggling with issues at school will see themselves supported in Herrera’s work. That said, I don’t see Imagine // Imagina as  “bootstrap” stories. Rather, they're hopeful stories that encourage young people to think about who they are and to imagine what they can do.

María and Beverly: In Imagine // Imagina Herrera (US Poet Laureate, 2015-2017) extends his hand to the many child refugees, migrants and immigrants here in the US—and encourages them to think about who they are and imagine the possibilities of their own lives. He’s created  deeply satisfying and empowering books that will help build resilient kids who can imagine a better world. 

*Highly recommended for all home, library and classroom collections.

—María Cárdenas and Beverly Slapin
(published 5/4/20)

IMAGINA. Text copyright © 2018 by Juan Felipe Herrera. Illustrations copyright © 2018 by Lauren Castillo. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA.

Calling the Doves / El canto de las palomas

author: Juan Felipe Herrera

translator: Juan Felipe Herrera

illustrator: Elly Simmons

Children’s Book Press / Lee & Low, 1995

kindergarten-up

Mexican American

Calling the Doves is a prime example of two of the qualities that draw me to Juan Felipe Herrera’s work again and again: the richness of his poetic language and his fluent writing in both Spanish and English. While some of Herrera’s books (like Featherless / Desplumado and Super Cilantro Girl / La superniña de cilantro) embrace broad social-justice themes like US immigration policy and the experiences of children with disabilities in school, Calling the Doves is profoundly personal. It describes Herrera’s childhood with his migrant farm worker parents in a way that leaves me in awe of its richness. In metaphor and simile, he paints the California mountains and valleys in gorgeous colors; his relationship with the land is deeply personal. The sky is his blue spoon, the “wavy clay of the land” is his plate. His dirt patio is “a sand-colored theater where I learned to sing.” The tarp that makes the family tent is a “giant tortilla dipped in green tomato sauce.”

Even more powerful than his description of the land that he grew up in is the way he evokes his parents and their family life. When his father builds them a one-room house on top of an abandoned car, he tells us the house was “a short loaf of bread on wheels. Inside it was a warm cave of conversations. Mexican songs and auctions blared from a box radio on the wall.” The wonderful artwork on this page makes you feel like you are nestled in that cave listening to the music and family chatter. His mother and his father are both full of wonder—his father knows birdcalls that bring the doves to him, and his mother recites poetry over dinner and heals injured sparrows and the neighborhood children.

In contrast to books that paint migrant workers as both materially and culturally impoverished (and sometimes evenly morally bereft), Calling the Doves never sees the people and lands of the author’s childhood as “less than.” There is a sense of both excitement and loss when, at the end of the book, the family decides to settle in one place so that Juanito can go to school. Even as Juanito envisions a new life for himself, he imagines it as part of his parents’ legacy: “As the cities came into view, I knew one day I would follow my own road. I would let my voice fly the way my mother recited poems, the way my father called the doves.”

Simmons’ artwork is beautiful; she uses colored pencils, casein, and acrylic paints on rag paper to render the soft, vibrant, colorful land of Herrera’s childhood. The characters have expressive, human faces that make them compelling and relatable. These are bold, often whimsical paintings that would look just as stunning hanging on a wall as they do in the pages of a children’s book. I would certainly love to have one in my own living room!

Calling the Doves reads well in both Spanish and English, something I have come to think of as one of the hallmarks of Herrera’s work. There are ways in which the languages interweave. In Spanish, there is the distinct mark of English in terms like “troca del Army” (Army truck) and “trailas” (trailers), which helps set the book in California. Spanish words, like carpa, plantillas, campesinos, and fiesta, also work their way into the English text. There are a few awkward moments, especially when it comes to the long translations of food names. For instance, “huevos de papas o huevos revueltos” becomes “huevos revueltos—scrambled eggs or fried eggs with potatoes.” But ultimately I appreciate that the Spanish and English versions seem interdependent. For anyone growing up speaking Spanish in California, the two languages are interwoven, and this is true in Herrera’s writing as well.

Calling the Doves could be read to children as young as Kindergarten, but could also be used with much older children to study metaphor and simile. The best part is that, if your students are curious about what happens to Juanito once he goes to school, you can pick up Upside Down Boy / El niño de cabeza—an equally beautiful sequel. Calling the Doves / El canto de las palomas is highly recommended.

—Grace Cornell Gonzales
(published 2/28/14)

*Highly recommended for all home, classroom and library collections.

Featherless / Desplumado

author: Juan Felipe Herrera

illustrator: Ernesto Cuevas Jr.

Children’s Book Press / Lee & Low, 2004

kindergarten-grade 3

Mexican American

Tomasito, a child with spina bifida, feels out of place and frustrated at his new school where everyone asks him why he’s in a wheelchair. His father brings him a caged parrot for a pet; the bird has a “pebble foot” and no feathers. “He was born a little different, like you were,” his father says, and suggests that Tomasito call him “Desplumado.” Tomasito’s new friend, Marlena, encourages him to join the school soccer team and—although his hands become “red and sore from zigzagging (his) wheely across the hot field”—Tomasito makes a cabeza goal and scores for the team. At home, Tomasito tells Desplumado that he can be a flyer, too: “There’s more than one way to fly!”

Herrera is an amazing poet; his Spanish version reads much better than the English. For instance, as Tomasito’s father surprises him with the little bird, he says, “¡Una sorpresa, Tomasito! ¡Mira, es para ti!” But the English takes all the feeling out: “A little pet, Tomasito! For you!”

Unfortunately, Cuevas’s acrylic illustrations feature heavy black lines surrounding characters that sometimes resemble Anime cartoon figures and sometimes show lumpy, distorted bodies—and a creepy-looking bird in a too-small cage. It’s also unfortunate that the heavy-handed metaphor compares a disabled youngster who uses a wheelchair to a featherless bird who is “confined to” a cage.

Nevertheless, Desplumado is about a youngster with a disability who, with the support of family and friends, finds a way to push himself beyond his physical limitations. As such, it’s a good story to begin conversations about disability and inclusion; and about how people are generally more similar than different. Most important, a disabled child in the classroom would probably ignore the metaphor and enjoy the story. Recommended.

Note: Teachers can extend this kind of discussion with short films of wheelchair sports, such as basketball, soccer, tennis, and handcycling. 

—Beverly Slapin
(published 11/3/13)

Upside Down Boy/ El niño de cabeza

author: Juan Felipe Herrera

translator: Juan Felipe Herrera

illustrator: Elizabeth Gómez

Children’s Book Press / Lee & Low, 2000

kindergarten-up

Mexican, Mexican American

Appointed California’s poet laureate in 2012, Juan Felipe Herrera grew up as the child of migrant farm workers. His bilingual picture books exemplify the type of literature that the teachers in my district are calling for. Written in fluent, vibrant Spanish, drawing upon the lived experiences of Latina/o children and families in the United States, they are full of engaging, lively stories with illustrations that fascinate students. And themes of social justice are always at the heart of his stories.

The Upside Down Boy / El niño de cabeza is a story drawn from Herrera’s own life as a child struggling to learn English and to adapt to a new community. Juanito, the child of migrant farm workers, attends school for the first time, where he is thrust into an unfamiliar environment and lost in a new language. He feels like un niño de cabeza—an upside down boy, who worries as his tongue turns into a rock. Young readers will see Juanito’s shyness, with the help of caring adults in his life—eventually turn to confidence. While his tongue remains a rock for a while, his art expresses who he is:

We are finger-painting.

I make wild suns with my open hands.

Crazy tomato cars and cucumber sombreros—

I write my name with seven chiles.

This is an excellent story to use with English language learners because it eloquently describes the feelings that Juanito experiences as he struggles with English. It also serves to remind English-speaking students (and their teachers) of the challenges that some of their classmates face.

However, the English version of the book can be confusing, especially because it is narrated by a child who does not initially speak English and yet contains a lot of dialogue in English. And as Juanito becomes more proficient in English, the question of what language he is speaking and writing becomes even more confusing. For example, on the last page he is directing the class choir. The Spanish reads: “¿Listos para cantar sus poemas?” le pregunto a mi coro. Uno… dos… !and three!” And the English reads: “Ready to sing out your poems? I ask my choir. Uno, dos… ¡and three!” Here, it’s unclear what language Juanito is speaking to his classmates.

Gómez’s brightly colored acrylic illustrations attempt to capture the colorful, surrealistic tone of the story. Readers will see Juanito’s name spelled out in chiles, for instance, and cattle (“reses”) flying in the sky as he watches the other children play during a time called “recess.” However, the characters are mostly expressionless and, with their thin and awkwardly angled limbs, almost look like stick figures.

Yet, despite the somewhat unappealing artwork, I find it impossible not to fall in love with the story’s rich, metaphorical language and the fact that it is an authentic story from the author’s own life. Recommended.

—Grace Cornell Gonzales
(published 10/5/13)

Super Cilantro Girl / La superniña del cilantro

author: Juan Felipe Herrera

translator: Juan Felipe Herrera

illustrator: Honorio Robledo Tapia

Children’s Book Press / Lee & Low, 2003

kindergarten-grade 3

Mexican American

 Super Cilantro Girl  La superniña de cilantro tells the story of Esmeralda, a child whose mother, despite the fact that she is a US citizen, is stopped at the US-Mexico border. Worried about her mother, Esmeralda dreams that she turns green like a bunch of cilantro, grows into a giant, and flies to the border to set her mother free. Here Herrera paints a vivid picture: “She gawks at the great gray walls of wire and steel between the United States and Mexico. She stares at the great gray building that keeps people in who want to move on.”

   

In her dream, Esmeralda rescues her mother. When the soldiers begin chasing her, she makes green vines and bushes of cilantro grow up and erase that border, declaring that the world should be sin fronteras—borderless. However, when Esmeralda wakes up, she discovers that she had been dreaming and that her mother is safely back home. 

Robledo Tapia’s acrylic illustrations, on a bright palette of mostly cilantro greens with browns, blues and yellows, are rendered in a comic-book style that children may find appealing. Unfortunately, his characters’ faces—skeletal, with bugged-out eyes and weird grimaces—are unnerving and almost grotesque, an awkward distraction from the story.

Herrera’s Spanish version reads at least as well as the English, to the extent that it’s hard for me to figure out which he wrote first. One doesn’t seem like an obvious translation of the other; rather, there are small differences in the text that show an appreciation for the subtleties of each language.

   

Super Cilantro Girl hints at the terror that children experience at the prospect of their families’ being split apart, but it does not put the characters in any real danger. Esmeralda’s mother is a citizen and, therefore, does not risk being separated from her family. In the foreword, Herrera expresses concern about families kept apart by borders and shares his wish that some superhero could abolish such borders and bring those families back together. However, making Esmeralda’s mother a citizen in no danger of actually being barred from returning home sends the message that family separation, deportation, and detention centers are all part of a dream from which you can wake up. These real dangers exist only in the lives of others.

As long as this book is accompanied by thoughtful discussion about the harsh realities of immigration, Super Cilantro Girl / La superniña del cilantro is recommended.

—Grace Cornell Gonzales
(published 6/14/13)