What might “Lucy” say? What might the ancestors say? What might an Indigenous child feel? A review of SHARUKO: El Arqueólogo Peruano / Peruvian Archeologist Julio C. Tello

What might “Lucy” say?

On November 24, 1974, In the Afar Triangle region of Hadar, Ethiopia, paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson and some colleagues discovered—buried in sediment—a 3.2-million-year-old partial skeleton of a human ancestor. The skeleton was about 40% complete: skull, jaws and some teeth, some rib pieces, long bones from the arms and legs, part of a shoulder blade, part of a pelvis, and a knee and ankle. 

The size of the skeleton, according to scientists, indicated that it was female. 

The scientists named her “Australopithecus afarensis” and nicknamed her “Lucy” (after the popular Beatles’ song, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”).

We don’t know her real name, but we know some things about her. We know that she walked on two legs. We know that she had strong arms that were built for load-bearing and that her upper body was adapted for partial life in trees. We know that she had opposable thumbs. Teeth marks indicate that she was killed and eaten by a saber-toothed tiger. A lot of what we “know” about her is based on sophisticated technology—bone scans—and educated guesses. 

What we don’t know is this: What might “Lucy” say about strangers’ making plaster casts of her bones and taking them far away from her world? Might she say: “Leave me alone!”? Might she say: “Whatever, as long as you go away!”?  

My friend and colleague, Judy Zalazar Drummond (Cahuilla / Chicana) taught sixth grade for many years at Horace Mann Middle School. The school was a project-based experiment in child-centered learning, in which the students helped create the curricula and the teachers facilitated. This student-based research, she said, increases not only the interest but the school success rate. 

One year in particular, Judy remembered, the students had the opportunity of working with Donald Johanson.

One of Judy’s team members, the social studies teacher, had contacted Johanson for permission to use his materials. He loved what they were doing with his work, and, as Judy told me, “honored us by assigning a top researcher” who came in two days a week for a month with a set of Johanson’s casts of “Lucy’s” bones. He taught Judy’s students about the role of the scientist in learning and teaching about the ancient past. Her students worked in teams and the culminating project, she said, was called “the Lucy Fair.” Her students shined, she said—“they made books, they made a movie, they made posters, they prepared a presentation about archeological tools.”

“One of my students,” Judy told me, “said that this was the best year of his life. Another said she had become a pen pal with Tim White, one of Johanson’s students.” 

“The kids were all convinced that they could research and learn and become successful. They remember it to this day as being exhilarating and they say it began their lifelong quest for learning.”

What might the ancestors say?

The other day, a friend said to me, “Egyptians who want to learn about their culture have to go to the London Museum.” 

Every culture has some sort of funeral ritual(s). Sometimes they’re public, and everyone’s invited. Sometimes they’re mixed, for the community to share stories, songs and prayers. Sometimes they’re private, for family and close friends only. Funeral rituals are an ancient way of imparting and maintaining history and culture. 

European-based archeology poses large questions. If maintaining a people’s history is an important part of ancient burial rituals, is it ever permitted to dig into graves to learn about their culture? What do we learn from examining people’s bones and is uncovering the burials of a people’s beloved dead permitted if it’s used as a tool for discovering how they lived? What might the ancestors say? 

The modern fields of anthropology and archeology are rooted in colonialist ideology. My friend and colleague, Kelly Reagan Tudor (Lipan Apache) told me that she’s “heard horror stories from Indigenous students who’d had professors who treated them as a ‘field of study’ rather than as citizens of a living culture.”

Even outside of the classroom, she said, “it’s an unfortunate situation, where Indigenous individuals participate in things that are harmful to their own people. It’s still grave-robbing. It’s still looting the ancestors.”

There are cultural and Indigenous approaches to these fields. For many years, Indigenous people have struggled to repatriate the burial items currently on exhibit in museums. Since 1990, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) has provided a process for museums and federal agencies to return human remains, funerary objects, and other sacred cultural material. Still, looting continues—and the struggle continues. 

So what should a respectful archeologist do? As Kelly said, without hesitation: “Ask for permission and don’t assume that there are no living relatives. Look for clues from the past and leave them in their place.”

My friend and colleague, Rachel Byington (Choctaw), told me about Kurt Sampson, a white guy and an archeologist by trade, who is passionate about the protection and preservation of the effigy mounds. Working with guidance from the Ho-Chunk Nation in Wisconsin, Sampson organizes volunteers to take care of the mounds and make sure they’re not being overgrown. He advocates for them and provides knowledge for best-care practices.

In Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota as well, Native and non-Native people work together on cleanups and preservation and share what they’re learning.They respect the cultures who are connected with the mounds and their accompanying sacred ritual space and they know that the mounds deserve respect. 

In teaching people about the effigy mounds, Sampson engages with students and teachers, arguing that there’s a living culture connected to those mounds. And that the ancestors who are buried in them want the mounds to be left alone.

 Kingsley Bend Mounds, Wisconsin Dells, WI 

after Spring Cleanup, 2020 by Ho-Chunk Nation 

photo: Lucas Quackenbush, Effigy Mounds Initiative

What might an Indigenous child feel?

There are young people who travel with their class to a museum and see its exhibit of “prehistoric” skulls and clothing and blankets and pots. These young people might be awed by the beauty and age of the items in this exhibit and the knowledge and history that it holds. There are also young people who travel with their class to a museum’s “prehistory” exhibit and recognize that these “artifacts” come from—and belong to—their own families and tribal nations. They may be horrified to know that their families and their burial items are being used as objects to further “scientific knowledge.” And these young people might not feel empowered to speak up, so they remain silent. And they know that something needs to change.

My friend, Judy, remembers a particular incident “as if it were yesterday,” she said:

Our class went on a field trip to the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, and we came upon a staging with scenery and people. It was labeled “Early California Indians” and I kept looking at it. There were kids with sticks digging in the ground and our teacher said that that’s how they got their food, digging for worms, and that’s why they were called “Digger Indians.” It was a family scene, with other kids. I don’t remember what they were doing because I focused on this one kid and the words, Digger Indians and the teacher’s saying that’s what they were called. The picture in our textbook was the same picture from the museum.

I was so humiliated. I couldn’t look at anything else. I couldn’t say anything. It was like a blanket had been thrown over me. I just wanted to shrivel up and roll away. I don’t remember anything else. This has affected me all my life.

SHARUKO: El Arqueólogo Peruano / Peruvian Archeologist Julio C. Tello

author: Monica Brown

Spanish: Adriana Domínguez

illustrator: Elisa Chavarri

Children’s Book Press / Lee & Low Books, 2020

grades 4-up

Indigenous / Peruvian

In this well-researched and beautifully illustrated picture book biography of Indigenous Peruvian archeologist Julio C. Tello (1880-1947)—nicknamed “Sharuko” (Quecha for “brave”)—young readers will feel the “brave and curious” boy’s passion for exploration, his remarkable discoveries as a young man, and his accomplishments as the founder of modern Peruvian archeology.

In telling Sharuko’s story, Brown discusses the child’s growing up in the foothills of the Andes Mountains, his pride in his own indigeneity, and his dedication to Peru’s Indigenous history which led him on a path that would make him famous as the first Indigenous archeologist in the Americas—in a way that will resonate with young people. 

Chavarri’s appealing gouche and watercolor paintings are mostly double-page spreads, highlighting the Andean mountains in saturated yellows and muted greens. Several portray Sharuko as a child with his loving family and their small gray chihuahua on practically every page. Single-page illustrations of country people and city people focus on radiant brown faces of varying tones. One spread shows the violence of the invading Spaniards, destroying everything. Most depict an adult Sharuko (now “Julio”) exploring archeological sites and studying in the city, and, on a background of Indigenous Peruvian motifs, a Peruvian family admiring a statue of Julio C. Tello. 

One especially lovely and complex spread symbolically depicts the way Indigenous people keep oral teaching alive to pass on to future generations. Here, a wondrous Sharuko listens to his father’s accounts of history. While their pup naps next to them, father and young son sit on a colorfully woven rug. Although both remain in the present, they appear to be traveling across the sky, guided by the sacred condor who flies past Machu Picchu, to encounter three Indigenous people from long ago in their resplendent regalia, looking out at the reader. 

Endpapers show the stone heads taken from the Chavín de Huántar site and highlighted throughout are motifs of Paracas textiles.

As always, Domínguez’s excellent Spanish, which appropriately forefronts the English text, doesn’t disappoint. She pays careful attention to the rhythm and the spoken value of the narrative, and whenever necessary, she switches the order of phrases or words. For instance, while a section in English reads, 

For centuries, the Indigenous people of Peru were treated unfairly and faced discrimination. This started in the 1500s when Spanish soldiers invaded Peru. The Spanish were looking for gold, and when they found it, they claimed the land and its riches for themselves. They established control by killing many Native Peruvians and rejecting their belief systems. The Spanish destroyed temples and cities, all in the pursuit of wealth and power.

The Spanish reads:

Los indígenas del Perú fueron maltratados y discriminados por siglos. Esto comenzó en el siglo XVI, cuando los soldados españoles invadieron el Perú. Los españoles buscaban oro, y cuando lo encontraron, se quedaron con la tierra y su riqueza. Lograron el control matando a grandes cantidades de indígenas peruanos y rechazando sus creencias. Los españoles destruyeron templos y ciudades en su búsqueda de poder y fortuna. 

(“The indigenous people of Peru were mistreated and discriminated against for centuries. This started in the 16th century, when Spanish soldiers invaded Peru. The Spanish were looking for gold, and when they found it, they kept the land and its wealth. They achieved control by killing large numbers of Indigenous Peruvians and rejecting their beliefs. The Spanish destroyed temples and cities in their quest for power and fortune.”)

Sharuko is an honest and inviting telling of Julio C. Tello’s life and the passions that drove him to become world famous as one of the most important archeologists in all of the Americas. However, the many illustrations of the caves and burial grounds that he explored—containing the bones of his ancestors—are accompanied by text that normalizes—no, valorizes—what Tello did then:

“Nothing scared Sharuko, not even the skulls he and his brothers uncovered in ancient tombs.” (italics mine)

“There (at Harvard University) he focused on anthropology and archeology, learning more about the ancient peoples of the Americas through the study of bones, tools, and other items they left behind.” (italics mine)

“At the (Chavín de Huántar archaeological) site he found art, structures, and other evidence that proved the Indigenous Chavín culture had been established more than three thousand years ago, making it the oldest culture known in Peru.” (italics mine)

“Julio also discovered an ancient cemetery with mummy bundles that showed how the Paracas people honored those who had died.” In her Afterword, Brown writes that “(Tello) also unearthed ancient textiles and hundreds of mummy bundles on the Paracas Peninsula.” (italics mine)

Sharuko treats Tello’s work respectfully—almost reverently, yet uncritically. Tello’s story can be used as a teachable moment about the ethics of archaeology (then and now), and supplemented, perhaps with information about the care and maintenance of the effigy mounds. Sharuko can be utilized as a springboard to raise questions for important discussions about the science of archeology, the role of archeology in “discovering” prehistory and prehistoric peoples, the ownership of the burial sites and their contents, and the responsibility to respect a people’s cultural wishes. In this context, Monica Brown, Elisa Chavarri and Adriana Domínguez—and Children’s Book Press—will have contributed to the furtherance of an important discussion. 

But, as it stands, I cannot recommend SHARUKO: El Arqueólogo Peruano / Peruvian Archeologist Julio C. Tello on its own. 

The following questions are suggested for wider discussion of SHARUKO: El Arqueólogo Peruano / Peruvian Archeologist Julio C. Tello: 

What values inform your life choices? Your career choices?

Who owns the burial sites of Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples who are alive today? How do you know? 

Who owns the burial sites of Indigenous nations whose people are assumed to be long gone? How do you know?

Is the gathering of knowledge worth the desecration of graves? Why or why not?

And always consider: What might an Indigenous child feel?

—Beverly Slapin

(published 10/15/20, revised 10/17/20)

Muchísimas gracias a mis amigas y colegas, Rachel Byington, Judy Zalazar Drummond, and Kelly Reagan Tudor. And honor to Kurt Sampson. 

Lola Levine Meets Jelly and Bean // Lola Levine and the Vacation Dream

author: Monica Brown 

illustrator: Angela Domínguez 

Little, Brown (2017) 

grades 1-3 

Peruvian American

Are you ready, world? Lola Levine is back! Lola Esther Levine, our energetic, super-smart, opinionated, eye-rolling, list-making, diario-keeping, not mean, Peruvian-Catholic-Jewish drama queen—is a second-grader who loves soccer, swimming, and climbing trees—and abhors the color pink. Oh, and she super-dislikes making sure that her kindergartner brother, Ben, doesn’t run off and create havoc the moment she turns her back. Which happens a lot.

In Lola Levine Meets Jelly and Bean, Lola’s journalist-mom and artist-dad have agreed that now that school has let out for the summer, it might be a good time to welcome a new family member—and the long-awaited kitty-cat countdown begins! There’s so much to do, including a mom-guided library visit to find out everything there is to know about cats and a dad-guided plan to develop and construct a cat play structure. Finally, the big day arrives and there’s no question about which kitty is coming home from the shelter: Jelly Levine.

But when Lola discovers that Ben is allergic to cats, both children find out that lying is never okay. Rather than return Jelly to the shelter, they sadly agree to search for a new home for her. The problem is resolved as Lola’s super best friend’s mother, aka Principal Blot, agrees to adopt Jelly as a second cat and Lola gets to visit whenever she wants to. And, as Lola begins to think that things couldn’t get better, dad and Ben have been visiting the shelter and come home with the family’s new puppy—whom they have named “Bean” (in honor of “Jelly.”)

Lola’s exuberant and imaginative narratives, which include information-rich diario entries, letters and conversations—as well as the questioning of everything—will totally engage young readers. Here, during swim lessons, 

[W]e spend each lesson practicing different strokes—today we focus on the backstroke and the breaststroke. I like the breaststroke because I imagine I’m a frog swimming in a swamp looking for flies and insects to eat. I also dog-paddle in the water and ask the teacher why there isn’t a cat paddle or a cat-stroke. She doesn’t have an answer for me. 

Domínguez’s appealing gray-scaled illustrations beautifully reflect the ethnic mix of the community’s children and adults, as well as Lola’s and Ben’s mixed parentage: While Lola’s straight dark hair and brownish complexion more resemble Mom’s, younger brother Ben’s light curly hair and fair complexion look more like Dad’s. I especially like the scenes where all are together.

author: Monica Brown 

illustrator: Angela Domínguez 

Little, Brown (2017) 

grades 1-3 

Peruvian American

In Lola Levine and the Vacation Dream, dad has sold lots of his paintings at an art show so the Levine family gets to visit “fun and awesome” Tía Lola—Lola’s namesake and “favorite aunt in the whole wide world”—who lives in Lima, Peru. Lola’s teacher, Ms. García, assigns her to write a couple of short reports about Peru—which is great because writing is Lola’s thing. Plus, Lola will “get to speak Spanish all day!”

Here, young readers will find lots of well-placed information, seamlessly incorporated into the story. For instance, in one of Lola’s reports, young readers will encounter the great Quechua archeologist, Julio César Tello; and in others, she writes about fútbol, llamas, and Pachacamac (the Temple of the Sun). 

While Lola questions, for instance, why students wear uniforms and why the school has a dirt field rather than a big playground with grass, the fact that she’s bilingual is a matter of her upbringing, so there are no inappropriate “fish-out-of-water” scenarios here. Rather, Brown presents the information in a way that works for young readers without disrupting the flow:

“Welcome to the class, Lola,” he says in Spanish. “I’m Mr. Sanchez.”

One of the students says, “Hola, Lola!” and then everyone starts saying it. I like the way it sounds.

“Where are you from”? a girl asks in Spanish. “The United States,” I reply. 

However, the fact that the Spanish words and terms in Lola’s narrative are unnecessarily italicized breaks the rhythm. Note to publishers and editors: Please italicize words and phrases—including foreign terms—only if they’re supposed to be emphasized. And in the case of “Hola, Lola!” the greeting should have begun with an initially inverted exclamation mark so it would look like this: “¡Hola, Lola!”

As Lola and her family eat Peruvian mangoes, tour the Mercado Indio, pet llamas, climb the Temple of the Sun, and see other palaces and pyramids, young readers will also discover how many zeros are in ten million (the population of Lima), the national colors of Peru, the history of fútbol, and the local historic spaces. 

Mom’s and Tía Lola’s discussion of the Temple of the Sun (with Lola and Ben) is, for the most part, excellent:

Mom: “There have been indigenous peoples living in Peru for over eleven thousand years. But around five hundred years ago, Europeans from Spain came and wanted to conquer the indigenous peoples and take their gold and use their land.”

Tía Lola: “But even though many died, and the Spanish destroyed this temple and stole the gold, indigenous people are strong, and we found ways to survive. We’re still here.”

Lola: “We’re smart and creative people,” I say, and I feel proud that I am Peruvian.

However, there was an opportunity lost here. The Inca, who built Pachacamac and other sacred structures, chose these sites for astrological reasons. It was the center of their world. Rather than referring to these sites, throughout the story, as “ruins”—which is colonialist language created to lessen their power—we should be teaching their existence as ongoing history. These amazing stone structures, like the people, are still here. 

In this story, Lola could have referred to the Temple of the Sun as a “ruin”—because that’s how she may have heard it described—and Tía Lola could have explained that, although it looks like a “ruin,” it’s actually a temple, one of many holy places that have, despite the efforts of the Spanish conquistadores to destroy them, endured. 

The morning after the family returns home, Lola finds a surprise. Not another trip to Peru, but a breakfast of bagels from Biff’s; and from the new grocery store, “a big bowl of delicious mangos that glow yellow, orange, and red. (Lola reads) the sticker on one of them and it says GROWN IN PERU.”

Except for the lost opportunity in describing Pachacamac, Lola Levine Meets Jelly and Bean and Lola Levine and the Vacation Dream are absolutely delightful and highly recommended.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 5/2/17)

Clara and the Curandera / Clara y la curandera

author: Monica Brown
illustrator: Thelma Muraida 
translator: Gabriela Baeza Ventura 
Piñata Books / Arte Público Press, 2011 
preschool-up 
Mexican American

When I was a little girl, my family and I lived in Borough Park, a low-income Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. My grandparents, economically marginalized people with large families, having been hastily transplanted some 30 years earlier from stetls in Poland and Russia, had brought little with them to the “goldene land”—pretty much just each other and the clothes on their backs. And their stories. Some of the stories were heartbreakers—such as the one my father told me about when the family had to sell their cow to the butcher in order to get the money for them to leave. As the butcher led her away, my father recalled, she turned her head to the family and mooed her goodbye.

The traditional stories were often hilarious, with each having an embedded “lesson.” In one, a poor peasant with a large family, including his wife, many children, and his mother-in-law, live in a tiny house in a tiny stetl somewhere. All he wants is peace and quiet. So he enlists the aid of the rabbi, who, after lots of beard-tugging and heavy thought, tells him to bring the dog and cat inside. When the noise worsens, the rabbi tells the man to bring in the cow, then the goat, then all the ducks and chickens. When the man can no longer bear the chaos, the rabbi tells him to put the animals back outside. After which the man enjoys his newfound peace and quiet, and finds out—as listeners already know—that life could always be worse.

Monica Brown’s Clara and the Curandera / Clara y la curandera was inspired by this traditional Jewish story. Here, a grumpy little girl, one of eight children, is “tired of not having any space or time” to herself. She doesn’t like to share, doesn’t like to do her chores, and doesn’t like to read. Overwhelmed, the child’s mother sends her to the curandera down the hall. But, rather than being taught how to survive the chaos of everyday life, Clara is given more tasks than she’s ever had—which indirectly teaches her that she has value in her community. In the end, when the curandera allows the transformed Clara to resume her old habits, she chooses to be helpful to everyone, and—while her family, friends and neighbors appreciate her for this newfound generosity—the curandera goes on to help another child with a problem.

Brown’s story has little left of the traditional one that inspired her—she’s flipped the time, the place, the characters, the cultural elements—and even the lesson learned. Yet, Brown is a talented storyteller and her version has a genuine feel to it, it’s got good rhythm, and it’s respectful of Mexican American elders, children, and the community in general. And, similarly to the “original,” the story is nuanced rather than “teachy-preachy”—the words show rather than tell. Young listeners will enjoy how Clara and the Curandera gently conveys its lessons.

Unfortunately, Muraida’s pastel artwork, on a palette of mostly blues, browns and golds, sabotages the story. Although the facial expressions of the main characters—Mami’s exasperation, Clara’s grumpiness, and the elderly curandera’s wisdom—are portrayed well, there are too many errors, ethnically and culturally. There is no father in the text; rather, it appears that Mami is a single mother of eight. Yet, the father appears as a small figure in the background of two illustrations. In the text, the family and community are Mexican American, but except for the curandera’s apartment (with candles, carved boxes and frames, and patterned tablecloth), nothing in any of the illustrations reflects the community’s culture. Rather, every room, hallway, and street appear to be bare; and in Clara’s apartment, which is home to her large family, nothing is out of place and there’s not a speck of dirt anywhere, not even a spot of grease on the oven.

Everyone—even the neighborhood children—has the exact same (light) complexion. And several of the artistic details—two of which separate the English from the Spanish text—are unforgivable. In one, Clara, hauling a heavy, stinky bag of trash, imagines herself enslaved. She is painted as dark. In another, a mini-portrait of Mami, Papi and the eight children, all of them are painted as dark. And in a third illustration, while Clara’s favorite doll is Mexican, the curandera gives her a new doll. This doll is white.

Behind the substandard art and boring design is this question: What kind of damage does this type of illustration inflict on children, especially the children whose cultures are being depicted? The lack of editorial attention, direction, and cohesiveness here are unacceptable. Our children deserve much better than this.

Unfortunately—despite the fact that Monica Brown is a very good storyteller—Clara and the Curandera / Clara y la curandera, as a picture book, can’t be recommended.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 8/1/16)

Marisol McDonald and the Monster / Marisol McDonald y el monstruo

author: Monica Brown 

illustrator: Sara Palacios 

translator: Adriana Domínguez 

Children’s Book Press / Lee & Low, 2016 

kindergarten-grade 3 

Peruvian American

Marisol McDonald, for those who may have forgotten, is mismatched and marvelous, unique, different, and one of a kind. In Marisol McDonald and the Monster, our young Peruvian Scottish American narrator reveals that her favorite letter is “m.” She loves almost all things that begin with “m.” In Spanish and English, her favorite foods are mangoes, melocotones, and milk with miel; and her other favorite “m” words include magic, mustard, moon, monkey, mami, maíz, and magnífico. But the one “m” word that Marisol doesn’t like, at all, ever, in any way, is monster. In fact, she is so afraid of monsters that she keeps her family members up all night until she can fall asleep.

The many “monster-under-the-bed” picture books are primarily for children who sleep alone, and the parents are the ones who solve the problem. What’s unique about this story is that Marisol has agency—she figures out the problem and works it through. I would have expected no less of this resourceful little girl.

How our young narrator takes control is delightfully, marvelously, uniquely, differently and totally, Marisol. With Mami’s help and her “big and great and wild imagination,” she gathers markers, colorful yarn, old soccer socks, and whatever else she can find and makes her own three-legged sock monster who is “unique, different, and one of a kind”:

I dress her in a purple polka-dot skirt and a green striped shirt. I sew on three legs so she will be extra good at soccer. And I give her red hair, just like me, and blue fingernails!

So, while there’s still a monster under the bed, she’s Marisol’s own monster. Her name is “Melody,” or “Melodía” (of course), and it seems that she’s also scared to be by herself.

Palacios’ bright, colorful artwork, rendered in ink, marker, crayon, and cut paper, then digitally enhanced, engagingly balances the well-spaced text, which falls on solid-color or white backgrounds. Her not-so-scary monsters and subtly simple yet detailed illustrations also show what is not explicitly stated. Here, for instance, is Marisol, whose bright red hair matches that of her father and whose complexion is more like her mother’s; while her brothers’ ethnic mixes are shown by their varying complexions and hair colors as well.

In one my favorite double-page spreads, the whole family, exhausted, is slumping on two small living room couches. The boys are practically asleep, dad is yawning, mom is staring into space while holding Marisol’s little brother, and Marisol is trying to stay awake. The only one not in any way affected by their almost-stupor is Kitty the dog, chasing a ball around the room. (And readers who notice Kitty the dog’s exuberance on many of the pages might guess at his connection with the “monster” sounds that frighten our otherwise brave young protagonist.)

Domínguez’s idiomatic and rhythmic Spanish text is both translation and interpretation, so hablantes will enjoy the story as much as English-speaking readers and listeners. Besides having several words and phrases in Spanish italicized in the English text (which is common in some bilingual stories), Dominguez has “flipped” the parallel English words and phrases into the Spanish in a way that feels natural and without missing a beat. In addition, Dominguez uses the fact that plurals in Spanish end in “os” or “as” to add to the rhythm of the text. For instance, while the English reads, “I know monsters aren’t real, but when I think of them, I see scary eyes and wild fur and pointy claws and sharp teeth,” the Spanish reads, “Sé que los monstruos no existen, pero cuando pienso en ellos, me imagino ojos espantosos, cuerpos peludos, garras puntiagudas y dientes filosos.”

This teamwork of author, illustrator and translator have created the third in a series of fast-moving stories in a bilingual picture book format, in which a bicultural (at least), independent, resourceful, confident little girl invites hablantes and English-speakers to join her as she navigates her world. As with the first two titles, Marisol McDonald and the Monster / Marisol McDonald y el monstruo is highly recommended.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 7/25/16)

Lola Levine Is Not Mean (2015) // Lola Levine, Drama Queen (2016)

author: Monica Brown 

illustrator: Angela Domínguez 

Little Brown 

grades 1-3

Peruvian American

Watch out, world! Here comes Lola Esther Levine, a super-smart, exuberant Catholic-Peruvian-Jewish-American second-grader: a diario writer, poet, soccer player and drama queen who practices Spanish and speaks her mind in breathless (mostly know-it-all) spurts. Lola eschews the dominant elementary-school mores: her super best friend is a boy, and she feels strongly that “boys and girls should look however they want.”

Aware that she may be regarded as opinionated (which she is), our young protagonist makes sure to insert the phrase “in my opinion” into much of her narration. She has other endearing self-imposed limitations as well: Because her mom has told her that “hate” is a strong word and she’d rather her daughter didn’t use it, Lola creates a reasonable substitute (e.g., “Cauliflower is another food that I dislike very much”). One of the other things she dislikes very much is the longer form of her name, “Dolores,” because, in Spanish, it translates as “pain.”

Lola and her bratty younger brother, Ben, have inherited their arts and smarts from “the most awesome (parents) in the whole wide world”: Dad is an artist who encourages creative expression, and Mom is a newspaper writer who has, as Lola says, “lots of opinions about words.”

When Lola, who is known school wide as a fierce goalie, gets in trouble for slide tackling and accidentally hurts a classmate in a recess soccer game, she acquires the rhyming nickname “Mean Lola Levine,” which she dislikes very much. How Lola—with a little help from her best friend and a science project that involves burying worms in garbage with her worst enemy—conquers being bullied, is a main theme of this first in a series of chapter books for young readers.

Domínguez’s spare black-and-white drawings nicely reflect the ethnic mix of the community’s children and adults, including the Levine children’s mixed parentage: While Lola’s straight dark hair and brownish complexion more resembles Mom’s, her younger brother Ben’s light curly hair and fair complexion looks more like Dad’s. I especially like the image of the family, sitting around the small dinner table, on which is dinner: matzo ball soup, Peruvian chicken, and flan.

Although Brown seamlessly weaves foreign terms such as diario, tía, buenos días, café con leche, bubbe and shalom into Lola’s narrative, the fact that they’re italicized breaks the rhythm. Note to publishers and editors: Please italicize foreign terms only if they’re supposed to be emphasized.

In Lola’s second adventure, she confides to her diario that her thoughts are “like monkeys jumping up and down in (her) head” and “sometimes (her) monkeys are swinging from trees.” Here, the otherwise fearless youngster has to audition for the class play in front of EVERYONE and, though she’s a fiercely competitive soccer player, Lola can’t decide whether she likes acting class, or what to perform for the audition. With her mom’s help—which consists mainly of answering questions with questions—Lola decides to perform a monologue about the great activist and organizer, Dolores Huerta.

Lola turns out an awesome rhyming monologue that lends her the confidence she needs for the audition. But it’s not enough—overcome with stage fright, she freezes and is assigned a non-speaking part, as Squirrel #2. And, as the curtain rises on opening night, Squirrel #2 finds herself in the middle of yet another disaster, something that appears humiliating and unfixable. Until her bubbe, as bubbes do everywhere, literally comes to the rescue. What happens is both hilarious and heartwarming, and I’m tempted to disclose the ending, which I won’t. (OK, let’s just say that Lola’s facility for quick thinking and extemporaneous rhyming—combined with that of her bubbe—comes in handily during the play.)

Lola Levine, Drama Queen—as with its predecessor, Lola Levine Is Not Mean—will resonate with young listeners and readers who will look forward to Lola’s next adventure (which I’d be willing to bet will have a rhyming title as well). Both books are highly recommended, in my opinion.

—Beverly Slapin

 (published 2/6/16)