La selva de Zonia // Zonia's Rain Forest

author: Juana Martinez-Neal 

illustrator: Juana Martinez-Neal

Candlewick Press, 2021 

all grades (Asháninka)

[Reviewer’s note: La selva de Zonia // Zonia’s Rain Forest is reviewed in two parts. The story and the back matter are discussed separately.

—BHS]

La selva de Zonia // Zonia’s Rain Forest: The Story

Young Zonia’s rain forest home is calm and beautiful—everything is “green and full of life.” A hammock hangs between two trees, and the presence of metal pots, a woven basket, a gourd and wooden bowls signals to young readers that this story takes place in the present. As Zonia looks on, her mom contentedly nurses her baby brother. Green grows all around, and a blue morpho butterfly flits around them.

“Every morning, the rain forest calls to Zonia,” and, every morning, she answers. With the butterfly in the lead, Zonia greets the forest’s creatures: two-toed sloths, red Andean cock-of-the-rocks, and South American coatis. She takes a ride on the back of a jaguar and says hello to Amazon river dolphins, congratulates an anteater family on the arrival of their new babies, plays hide-and-seek with a spectacled caiman, hangs upside-down on a high branch with a boa constrictor, and visits with a group of Arrau turtles. And after Zonia’s visit, the butterfly guides her home—almost.

What she sees frightens her—much of the forest has been clearcut; all that’s left are stumps. Zonia’s animal friends are gone; only her butterfly guide remains. She runs home and tells her sorrowful mama that the forest needs help.

“It is speaking to you,” says Zonia’s mama.

“Then I will answer,” says Zonia, “as I always do.”

On the final spread, Zonia is no longer a carefree child. Her face is painted and she wears a patterned dress. With one hand on a remaining tree trunk, she looks forward. She is ready for the struggle ahead. With the butterfly circling around her and showing her the way, Zonia tells young readers:

“We all must answer.”

It’s no surprise that Martinez-Neal tells the Spanish version, La selva de Zonia, at least as beautifully as the English. Especially, in the Indigenous struggle to save the rain forest, her repetition of a particular phrase—“verde y llena de vida” (“green and full of life”) strikes an emotional chord, because, by the “end” of the story, young readers ascertain what’s coming and what has to be done—and that it is far from the end of the story.

Martinez-Neal sets every full-bleed double-page spread—rendered in acrylic, colored pencil, pastel, ink, and linocuts and woodcuts—on handmade textured banana bark paper, which she purchased from women paper artisans of Chazuta. In most of the illustrations, gentle rainforest greens frame Zonia’s bright yellow dress; and the blue butterfly on the right of each spread leads to the next page. Young readers see the soft textures and blending of art and story coming together in a gentle, satisfying whole.

On the acknowledgements page, Zonia’s guide—the blue morpho butterfly—circles around a statement issued by the United Nations International Labour Organization at the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention in 1989:

The peoples concerned shall have the right to decide their own priorities for the process of development as it affects their lives, beliefs, institutions and spiritual well-being and the lands they occupy or otherwise use, and to exercise control, to the extent possible, over their own economic, social and cultural development. In addition, they shall participate in the formulation, implementation, and evaluation of plans and programmes for national and regional development which may affect them directly.

As this particular story—La selva de Zonia // Zonia’s Rain Forest—ends, young readers understand that this brave little girl knows who she is, what she comes from, and all that she has been given to do. And the story of all the “Zonias”—the struggle of all the Indigenous peoples who acknowledge the Amazon rain forest as their home—“green and full of life”—continues.

Told in a way that engages the youngest readers and listeners—and everyone else—La selva de Zonia // Zonia’s Rain Forest is a beautiful and important story that encourages compassion and activism. 

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

— Beverly Slapin

(published 12/12/2020)

La selva de Zonia // Zonia’s Rain Forest: About the back matter

“Todos debemos de responder.” // “We must all answer.” In the last few words of the story, Zonia acknowledges the Indigenous peoples who, for some five millennia, have sustainably managed the rain forest—and are now struggling to save it. And she calls out to allies all over the world to join them. 

Asháninka is the name of Zonia’s people, the language that’s spoken at home, and the language of one of the largest Indigenous nations struggling to save the Amazon rain forest. The author acknowledges and thanks the many people who worked to translate this story into Asháninka Satipo-Junin, and others who worked to vet it for fidelity and accuracy. So it’s unfortunate that the Asháninka version was relegated to one page in the back matter and accompanied only by an illustration of a sloth hanging upside down. 

Although Candlewick took the extra step of hiring a team to translate this beautiful story into the Asháninka language, no one who speaks or reads the language will benefit from its placement in any substantial way. Rather, Asháninka speakers will have to turn back to the illustrations to enjoy this story.

Since this book is set to be published in Spanish and English only—and the decision was made not to incorporate the Asháninka version into the story—I would like to see the story in Asháninka, perhaps in a limited print run, donated to the Asháninka people. As it stands, the inclusion of the Asháninka text on a single page, while a well-intended gesture of respect, is ultimately hollow and performative because it’s unlikely that anyone from that region will benefit from the translation of this story about their beloved rain forest in their own language.

The rest of the back matter is divided into seven  sections: “The Asháninka People,” “A Few Facts about the Amazon,” “Threats to the Amazon,” “Illegal logging,” “Farming,” “Mining,” and “Oil and Gas Extraction.” The back matter is limited and confusing. It contains numerous errors and is full of Eurocentric markers as well. 

Here are examples:

1. Text: Zonia is Asháninka, which is the largest Indigenous group living in the Peruvian Amazon… 

What’s wrong: Referring to an Indigenous nation as a “group,” rather than “people,” “nation,” or “society”—diminishes them. 

Corrective: Zonia is Asháninka, which is the largest Indigenous nation living in the Peruvian Amazon.

2. Text: They have a long history of insisting on self-determination….

What’s wrong: “Insisting on self-determination” diminishes their continuous struggle, recognized by the United Nations. 

Corrective: They have a long history of struggling for self-determination and freedom—to exercise control over their own economic, cultural and social development. 

3. Text: Those rights continue to be ignored and violated, and harassment grows because of others’ impatience to develop, cultivate and mine the world’s tropical forests for profit. 

What’s wrong: Placing the Asháninka people’s difficulties into the passive tense—things that happen to them—rather than the active tense—who’s doing it and why—in a sense, blames the victim. 

Corrective: They are answering the call to protect the rain forest—their home—from the rapacious multinational logging and mining industries that continue to destroy the world’s tropical forests for profit. 

4. Text: The Amazon rain forest takes carbon dioxide out of the air and turns it into oxygen, producing more than twenty percent of the oxygen on our planet…

What’s wrong: This is a widely held myth that’s been debunked by scientists for years. See “Why the Amazon doesn’t really produce 20% of the world’s oxygen,” in National Geographic, 2019: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/08/why-amazon-doesnt-produce-20-percent-worlds-oxygen/

Corrective: The trees in the Amazon rain forest filter and reprocess huge amounts of carbon dioxide, which helps stabilize climates locally and globally.

5. Text: The Amazon rain forest shrinks by 18.7 million acres every year, or the size of twenty-seven soccer fields every minute. It shrank 17 percent in the last fifty years alone. 

What’s wrong: This phrasing hints that “shrinking” is something that happens naturally. 

Corrective: Depredation and degradation caused by the rapacious logging and mining industries destroys some 18.7 million acres every year, or the size of twenty-seven soccer fields every minute. In the last fifty years alone, they have demolished some 17 percent of the rain forest.

6. Text: The Amazon rain forest is home to between four hundred and five hundred different Indigenous groups—some of which are isolated or uncontacted.

What’s wrong: Besides referring to Indigenous peoples as “groups,” the phrasing suggests that they can’t be found by anyone.

Corrective: In some of the larger areas, difficult access has allowed them to remain isolated from the outside influences of the settler society.

7. Text: Every day, the Amazon rain forest is being changed by development. Large infrastructure projects (dams, roads, hydroelectric power plants) and extractive industries (oil wells, mining) have transformed the lives of the people who live there, sometimes permanently and not always in positive ways.

What’s wrong: The infrastructure projects and extractive industries do not ever “transform” the lives of the people impermanently or in positive ways.

Corrective: Every day, large infrastructure projects (such as dams, roads, hydroelectric power plants) and extractive industries (such as oil wells, mining) destroy the land and endanger the lives of the Indigenous peoples who have, for millennia, lived and thrived in the vast Amazon rain forest. 

8. Text: Forests are being burned down and cleared to make room for pastureland on which to graze commercial livestock. Destroying the rain forest also destroys a key source of oxygen (which all living things need in order to keep on living).

What’s wrong: See #4.

Corrective: The Amazon rain forest is critical to the world because of its rich biodiversity, its enormous stores of carbon, and its effects on many species of plants and animals found nowhere else. Forest clearing for increased commercial agricultural development, such as cattle grazing, decimates the balance of the rain forest.

9. Text: While illegal gold mining is done on a small scale, its effects are anything but small. Illegal mining causes an increase in other types of crime. And, to find even trace amounts of gold, mercury is dumped into the rivers and streams, poisoning the water and all that lives and depends on it.

What’s wrong: Gold mining not only pollutes the rivers and streams, it significantly limits the regrowth of Amazon forests. 

Corrective: The extraction process of mining strips nitrogen from the soil and contributes to the presence of mercury within forests and rivers. This process not only contaminates food sources from the rivers, it also limits the forest’s important capacity to accumulate and store carbon. (See https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200629090012.htm)

10. Text: Oil and gas exploration and extraction take place largely in Indigenous territories. Due to poor environmental practices by these industries, the ability of the people and the land to recover from such damage is severely limited.

What’s wrong: This section makes the assumption that the Indigenous peoples of the rain forest are helpless.

Corrective: Decades of oil and gas extraction have widely contaminated much of the Amazon rain forest in Peru. Other negative results of the pipelines include sharp declines in fish stock, interruption of seed dispersal and natural forest regeneration, and habitat destruction. In the last 15 years, protests by Indigenous organizations against the oil companies have exposed the toxic results of this contamination.

  

—Beverly Slapin

(published 12/12/2020)

Míl gracias a mis colegas David Bowles, Judy Zalazar Drummond, and Ricardo Ramírez.

“Mamá Dearest”: Evaluating Latino Nursery Rhymes in Books for Children

Rhyming songs, proverbs, riddles and games for children present fun ways to play with words and meaning, to develop language learning, and to remember and pass on culture and history from generation to generation. They also provide opportunities to introduce young children to cultures other than their own. 

Following is a comparison of two children’s books that contain rhymes for young children. We highly recommend one of them and do not recommend the other. 

author: Susan Middleton Elya

illustrator: Juana Martinez-Neal 

Putnam, 2016 

preschool-grade 3

La Madre Goose is Elya’s reworking of 18 classic Mother Goose “nursery” rhymes, with Spanish words thrown in. The idea seems to have been to introduce Spanish words to English-speaking children who are already familiar with these rhymes; and if there’s any appeal at all, it’s to parents looking to add Spanish words to their young children’s vocabularies. 

But the subtitle of this volume, “Nursery Rhymes for los Niños” notwithstanding, it was not intended for Spanish-speaking youngsters. Tossing a few Spanish words or phrases into European nursery rhymes does not transform them into something that’s “multicultural” or “bilingual” or “code switching” or anything other than opportunistic and appropriative. The result of what might have been envisioned as creative and fun wordplay is a hodgepodge of phrases that make no sense in Spanish or English. La Madre Goose is confusing, not to mention insulting, to young hablantes—the Spanish-speaking children who are never considered in this kind of project.

In addition, classic Mother Goose “nursery” rhymes were never meant for the nursery. Rather, they were hidden political commentary satirized as children’s rhymes. Take, for instance:

Peter, Peter pumpkin eater

had a wife but couldn't keep her.

He put her in a pumpkin shell,

and there he kept her very well.

This poem is about infidelity and murder. The gruesome message here is that “Peter” couldn’t “keep” his wife at home because she kept running away to have numerous encounters with other men, so he killed her and hid her body in a ludicrously large pumpkin shell, in which he “kept” her “very well.” 

Here is Elya’s version, which she entitles “Peter, Peter Calabasa,” and which is not only sanitized, but doesn’t make sense at any level:

Peter, Peter Calabasa,

got a wife for his new casa.

When she saw the round casita,

she repainted it—bonita!

Peter Pumpkin got a wife for his new house, which she repainted. Wouldn’t he have gotten a house for his wife? Does Peter consider his wife like a piece of furniture? If Elya had something in mind beyond rhyming when she created this, it’s hard to tell.

Then there’s the famous “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep.” One of the first versions reads:

Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool?

Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full.

One for the master 

One for the dame

And one for the little boy 

Who cries down the lane.

In this poem that originated in medieval times, the three bags of wool are said to represent one-third for King Edward I (the “master”), one-third for the Church of England (the “dame”), and the rest (after he’d paid the 66% wool tax) for the poor shepherd, whose children were probably starving (“the little boy who cries down the lane”).

And here is Elya’s version: “Baa, Baa, Black Oveja”:

Baa, baa, black oveja, have you any lana?

Sí, sir, sí, sir, three bags llenas.

One for my sister, una for mi madre,

and one to be shared by my brother and mi padre!

What is this? Is Elya’s poem about the necessity of sharing with your family? If so, then why isn’t the wool divided into four equal parts, instead of three? Why do sister and mom each have one bag full, while brother and dad have to divide one between them? Is this a lesson about fractions? Or about making amends for centuries of inequality? Or is it possible that Elya’s sheep is distributing her own wool—in bags—to her own family?

While Elya’s gratingly awkward combinations of English and Spanish don’t make any linguistic or cultural sense, Martinez-Neal’s luminous artwork makes this book lovely to look at. The softness of her warm, gentle paintings, on an earthy palette of blues and teals, beiges and yellows, highlighted by purples and oranges, appears to be a true labor of love. 

In describing the collage-mixing process for her debut picture book, Martinez-Neal told me that she selected different papers with a variety of textures and additionally hand-textured them, using matte medium as a glue that dries clear and soaks in the color, adding and drying one layer at a time. She then painted in her images in acrylic, colored pencil and graphite—or sometimes all acrylics—that, together, adds a gouache feeling to them; and then brushed on a white layer to soften the images. Martinez-Neal slowly developed this technique “organically experimenting,” she said, and makes changes in every book because she often “gets bored.”

The results here are depictions, many in groups, of chubby-cheeked multiethnic children and cuddly animals with childlike expressions to whom the youngest kids can relate. Martinez-Neal’s own babies, she told me, were models for some of the children here.

It’s unfortunate that Martinez-Neal’s beautiful artwork cannot save this contrived, formulaic and unimaginative book. La Madre Goose: Nursery Rhymes for los Niños is not recommended.

author: Alma Flor Ada

author: F. Isabel Campoy

illustrator: Maribel Suárez

editor (English): Tracy Heffernan

Hyperion Books for Children, 2004

preschool-grade 3

Mamá Goose: A Latino Nursery Treasury / Un Tesorio de Rimas Infantiles is everything that La Madre Goose: Nursery Rhymes for los Niños is not. 

Ada and Campoy planned the sections together and then chose the selections in this extensive compendium that contains lullabies, finger games, lap games, sayings, nursery rhymes, jump-rope songs, song games, proverbs, riddles, tall tales, and much more (including an outrageous ballad about a dead cat—“El señor don Gato”—who is brought back to life by the smell of sardines). The entire volume is lovingly compiled and beautifully illustrated with exuberant children and animals; and the poetic Spanish is “creatively edited” into English. Each section has a thoughtful and educational introduction and, although I would like to have seen a note about each piece’s cultural origin, it’s clear that great inspiration, planning, talent and execution went into every aspect of this project. 

Suárez’s deceptively simple watercolor illustrations, on a bright, earthy palette of mostly browns, greens, blues and golds, portray multicultural and multiethnic children and their relatives, and the design elements reflect the diversity of Latin-American and Spanish traditions as well. For instance, young readers will see children and adults in Peruvian, Mexican—and even medieval Spanish—dress, and there are Mexican adobe houses and Cuban and Puerto Rican tropical beaches and huge Spanish edifices along with borders that feature Spanish tiles and Mexican piñatas and papel picado, just to name a few. And children will love the illustrations of smiling animals behaving in species-anomalous ways—such as carefree rabbits, playing and chasing carrots in the sea, while smiling fishes happily cavort on dry ground.

Colorful chapter headings and borders, along with white space that leaves lots of room for both the Spanish and English texts as well as the illustrations, make for an attractive, uncrowded, child-friendly design. 

One thing rarely portrayed in this kind of anthology for children—and something that deserves special mention—is the depiction of a variety of social classes, some in poems that abut each other. Here, for instance, are two upper-class girls and a boy in Spain. The girls, in red dresses and mary jane flats, carry white parasols and the boy, in an expensive-looking suit and hat, carries his schoolbooks. They are on “el paseíto de oro”—the golden path—without a care in the world. Here is a poor vendor (“la carbonerita”), also in Spain, wheeling a heavy coal-filled cart. Her face and apron covered with soot, she asks the reader, “How can you expect me to keep my face clean, if I am a coal-seller?” And here is a hard-working young servant girl, who washes, irons, cooks, cleans, sews, and sweeps—until Sunday, when she can go out to play. 

Since Ada and Campoy selected pieces recognized all over the Spanish-speaking world, it seemed natural for them to offer the Spanish versions first—which encourages Spanish-speaking parents and grandparents (as well as teachers) to share their own remembered rhymes and stories with their young hablante relatives and students. As well, following the Spanish pieces with those that have been “creatively edited” in English—and set off in italics—will have English-speaking children enjoying them as well and, by looking over to the Spanish, learning some Spanish and connecting with cultures other than their own.

A particular rima or canción brings back memories of when my child was a toddler. Next to a brightly colored full-page painting of a green mama frog in a blue dress comforting her youngster who has fallen off a tricycle, the rima or canción reads:

Cura, sana,

madre rana,

dame un besito

y vete la cama.

Kiss, kiss,

Mother Toad,

Send the pain

Down the road.

I remember often laying a hand over my own son’s scraped knee and singing,

Sana sana,

colita de rana,

si no sanas hoy,

sanarás mañana.

Heal, heal,

Little frog’s tail.

If you don’t heal today,

You’ll heal tomorrow.

Until one day (mid-“sana, sana”), he interrupted me and said, “It’s OK, mom, I’ll just go get a bandaid.”

Unfortunately, the introductions for each section appear in English only. This is frequently an issue that publishers justify by design space limitations and assumptions about “secondary” languages’ (although, in this case, Spanish is the primary language) being unnecessary in prefatory material. In education, while language equality is improving, la lucha continúa.

Mamá Goose: A Latino Nursery Treasury / Un Tesorio de Rimas Infantiles is indeed a treasure. It’s highly recommended.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 3/11/18)

Míl gracias a mi amiga y colega, María Cárdenas. 

Alma y cómo obtuvo su nombre // Alma and How She Got Her Name

author: Juana Martinez-Neal

illustrator: Juana Martinez-Neal 

Candlewick Press, 2018 

preschool-up

Peruvian

Our young protagonist has a long name—Alma Sofia Esperanza José Pura Candela. Her name is so long that writing it on the back of a photograph requires her to tape an extra piece of paper to the bottom. “It never fits,” she grumbles to her papi, who decides that this is the perfect time to tell her the stories of her many names—and gives her the emotional room to “decide if it fits.”

In Alma’s search for her identity, Martinez-Neal tells a gentle story of family culture and history and fills it with illustrative detail that will encourage the youngest readers to embark on their own journeys of self- and family discovery. 

Alma’s papi opens their blue family album. Its photos carry everyone’s story and, as Alma learns about her ancestors, she sees the connections between them and herself. In some of the illustrations, Alma steps into a photograph and meets a relative; for instance, lighting a candle with her curandera great-aunt Pura, who turns around and smiles at her. And as she draws or paints a representation of each of her forebears, she happily takes in what is special about that person by adding another name to her own.

The left side of several pages and some double-page spreads as well depict our niñita, in pink-striped overalls, on her adventure; while some pages on the right side depict old photos of the ancestors whose names she carries. Youngsters may ascertain that the pink tones indicate the present, while the blue and blue-gray tones represent the past. As the pages turn, some of the blues—such as a family photo album, the books, an old trunk and its contents—are gifts from her ancestors and move to the contemporary side.

On every page, Alma wears a red mal de ojo bracelet, a charm her great-aunt had tied around her wrist when she was born to keep her safe and connected. As well, a tiny bird, her companion and support—is the first to notice the relatives and continues to interact with them—and is always present to guide her. 

Martinez-Neal’s design employs lots of white space and limits her palette to pinks, blues and blue-grays. For the cool and warm grays on the pages that depict historic photographs of Alma’s ancestors, she used Prismacolor pencils and graphite, then reversed and transferred the art to handmade textured acrylic paper. For the blues and pinks on the pages that depict contemporary scenes, she painted directly onto the paper. As the story progresses, youngsters will discern past and present coming together in Alma’s life. 

In both the English and Spanish versions, everything that Alma sees and labels—including a large map, many countries of which, with her little bird's assistance, she’s connected with the red string of her bracelet—is lettered in Spanish. Since Alma is Peruvian, this makes cultural sense.

Martinez-Neal renders each of Alma’s ancestors’ names in different blue typefaces to highlight what is special about them, and, on one of the last pages, Alma’s own first name tops the list. On the last page is a photograph of a smiling Alma, her little bird happily perched on her head. Alma is cradling a book that she has made; it’s entitled, “My History,” and taped to her photo is a piece of paper on which she’s written the name that belongs to no one else in her family. “That’s my name,” she says, “and it fits me just right! I am Alma, and I have a story to tell.”

In hinting at some things, it’s clear that Martinez-Neal leaves a lot for interpretation, illustrating the family’s continuum without words. For instance, there’s a photo of Alma’s abuela, Sofia, sitting alone. Next to her is a young jasmine-looking plant in a small pot. On the facing page the grown plant, in a blue pot, frames father and daughter, who are sitting together. As such, Martinez-Neal illustrates these familial relationships while providing space for young readers to finish the story in ways that are meaningful to them. 

Youngest readers (and older readers as well) will relate to Alma y cómo obtuvo su nombre and Alma and How She Got Her Name, and teachers and librarians will find tons of teachable moments here. 

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

—Beverly Slapin

(published 1/1/18)

La Princesa and the Pea

author: Susan Middleton Elya  

illustrator: Juana Martinez-Neal 

Putnam, 2017 

preschool-grade 3 

Peruvian

La Princesa and the Pea is a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s popular tale, “The Princess and the Pea,” here set in a Peruvian village. Throughout, Elya uses mostly English with some Spanish. The queen is “la reina,” and she’s got some serious control issues around her son, “el príncipe.” 

Aligning it with the familiar tale, Elya uses a simple and effective rhyme scheme to move the story along. She includes  Spanish words into the rhymes and, perhaps most importantly, the words are not translated on the page. Instead, they are red and there is a glossary at the end of the book, if you need it. I would not go as far to say this is a bilingual book, but I would say it is a book that appreciates the Spanish language.

For me, what elevates this book is Juana Martinez-Neal’s illustrations. Rendered in acrylics, colored pencil and graphite on textured paper, they are gorgeous, intricate, and funny. I mean, really, laugh-out-loud funny.

First, there is la reina. She is not pleased. She wears a red llicila (shawl) with a repeated pattern of little people on it, and a deep red montera (hat) that often hosts her cat, who is equally unimpressed. No woman is ever going to be good enough for her son, and she seems always on the verge of pinching or throwing a shoe (although I may be giving her some of my own abuela’s attributions).

Juana Martinez-Neal has lovingly given us a book that reflects her own Peruvian culture. She includes a vast array of woven patterns, deep reds and oranges throughout. But, most importantly, she provides people who represent a spectrum of Peruvian-ness.

Some of the characters wear chullos (hats with ear flaps) while some women are wearing monteras (wide brimmed hats that form a sort of bowl). The peoples skin tones are all different shades, which shows young readers diversity, even within a single ethnicity. Oh, and the chickens, roosters, and guinea pigs that are in constant motion provide yet another reason to come back to this book over and over again.

So, if and when you are willing to ditch Skippyjon Jones (see http://decoloresreviews.blogspot.com/2013/04/skippyjon-jones-and-big-bones.html) in favor of actual Latinx representations, La Princesa and the Pea is *highly recommended for all home, library and classroom collections.

—Laura Jiménez

An earlier version of this review first appeared in Laura Jiménez's blog, Booktoss (booktoss.blog). We thank Laura for permission.