A Visit to Cuba // Vamos a Cuba

author: Alta Schreier

Heinemann Library, 2001

grades 2-4

Cuban

A Visit to Cuba and Vamos a Cuba are part of Heinemann’s “A Visit to” series of 24 titles, simple overviews that portray the land and people, and especially children, of various countries. As with the others, each page here contains a full-color photo accompanied by a two- or three-sentence description of the land, landmarks, homes, food, clothes, work, transportation, language, school, free time, celebrations, and the arts. Appended are key facts, a glossary and index. In addition, the English version contains a section of Spanish “words you can learn.”

In 2006, a group of vociferously anti-Castro Cubans in Miami objected to the contents of A Visit to Cuba and Vamos a Cuba, complaining that they contained deceptive information and wrongfully painted an idealistic picture of Cuban life. After a politically charged struggle—and against the recommendations of two review committees, the school board’s attorney, and the school system’s Superintendent—the Miami-Dade County School District removed A Visit to Cuba and Vamos a Cuba from school libraries. The ACLU filed a lawsuit, the US Supreme Court refused to hear it, and the board’s decision was upheld. Despite the fact that A Visit to Cuba and Vamos a Cuba were the only books in the series that had received a complaint, all 24 titles were removed from Miami-Dade County’s school libraries. The litigation expenses for the Miami-Dade School District totaled more than $250,000.

It’s worth noting that the Miami Cubans do not represent all Cuban communities in the US. When, how and why families came here are attached to different historical, economic, social and political issues. Many pro-Castro Cubans fled the anti-democratic Batista regime that supported the super-wealthy, organized crime, and US corporations, while impoverishing everyone else. Those who had been allied with Batista, along with others in the middle- and upper classes, fled the new revolution. Many worried families sent their children, who became known as “Pedro Pans,” to be raised by friends and relatives here. Many came for what they believed would be a better life, and, as the revolution progressed, many returned. Some immigrants hate Fidel, others adore him—it’s complicated. But, for the most part, Cuban communities in the US find the extremism of the Miami Cubans exasperating—they appear to be frozen in a time warp.

What infuriated the Miami Cubans about A Visit to Cuba and Vamos a Cuba is not difficult to see. Alongside short, easy-to-read statements—appropriately without political commentary—are clear photos that depict Cuba’s ethnically mixed people. Here is a group of young school children mugging for the camera. Here are children and their parents enjoying an outing. Here are large groups dancing at festivals. And here is what must certainly have enraged the Miami Cubans: joyous adults and children celebrating the Cuban national holiday called “Day of the Rebellion,” the day that marks the attack on the Moncada Army Barracks by Fidel Castro and his small group of revolutionaries on July 26, 1953. The caption simply states: “Cuba’s biggest celebration is called Carnival. It is held July 26. People dance and sing at this festival.”

However, since all of the images are stock photography inexpensively reproduced from Corbis, children will see a limited picture of Cuba. For instance, the photo on the page “homes” shows people walking down the street but not any housing. The page entitled “food” is heartbreaking. Rather than depicting a family enjoying dinner together—or an open-air market that showed the many different kinds of produce—here instead is someone holding a sad little tray of starches. While the “free time” page depicts people playing baseball, Cuba’s national sport; there is no depiction or even mention of anyone playing dominoes, the national game of Cuba. Finally, somewhere in all of the Corbis collection, there must be a beach shot that highlights the amazing turquoise water surrounding the island rather than this one puny little cove.

Unlike George Ancona’s amazing photoessay, Cuban Kids (Cavendish, 2000), many of the photos here don’t do the country justice. But considering that there are few basic—and accurate—introductory picture books about Cuba for early grades, that these depict happy and healthy Cuban children, and that they were the focus of a ridiculous right-wing lawsuit, A Visit to Cuba and Vamos a Cuba are recommended.

—Lisette Silva and Beverly Slapin
(published 10/16/15)

Soap, Soap, Soap / Jabón, Jabón, Jabón

author: Elizabeth O. Dulemba 

illustrator: Elizabeth O. Dulemba 

Raven Tree Press, 2009 

preschool-grade 3 

Mexican American

The illustrator of Paco y La Planta de Chile Gigante / Paco and the Giant Chile Plant is back now with her own work. With the same structure as Paco, Soap is a modernized version of the classic “Appalachian Jack” tale written in English with Spanish words peppered throughout and highlighted in red, and primarily featuring Latina/o characters. Also like Paco, Soap is marketed as bilingual, which, of course, it’s not.

Here, Hugo’s mother sends her forgetful child to the market to buy soap. Although the market is only a short walk from his house, he chooses a roundabout path through the playground, down the sidewalk, past a ditch, through the schoolyard into the market. Sort of like the comic strip, “Family Circus.” Along the way he encounters multiple obstacles, neighbors, and misunderstandings, which sometimes lead to violence. Each time, he forgets what he was supposed to buy, but is reminded by something someone says until his next encounter.

Hugo slips and falls into a puddle of mud, his friend also falls into the mud puddle, an elderly neighbor drops her groceries and grabs and scolds Hugo, and a bully hurls him into a ditch. Finally, Hugo gets to the market, purchases the soap, jumps back over the ditch, past his fuming neighbor—still yelling about her groceries—and through the playground to his house. His mother, agape when she sees her stinky, filthy child, marches him to the tub to bathe himself with his newly purchased soap, soap, soap.

Dulemba’s acrylic paintings on a palette of bright oranges, yellows, greens and earthy browns, are inviting; and the story’s premise is silly but appropriate for the age range for which it is intended. However, Soap, Soap, Soap is a tour de force of racial and ethnic stereotypes.

Hugo’s mother appears to be single. Certainly, single mothers exist in all cultures and ethnicities, but it is exasperating to see Latinas consistently cast as women who must raise their children alone. In addition, both women here—Hugo’s mother and the elderly, hotheaded Latina who drops her groceries and remains incensed for what could be hours—are heavyset with prominent derrières. Hugo’s young friend, an African American child, is named “Jellybean,” which is a racial slur for Black people [1]. And, as with Paco, there is not one actual cultural marker in this story [2], and the highlighting of a few Spanish words in red sends a negative and confusing signal to Spanish-speaking children while teaching English-speaking children little of value.

And, although Dulemba’s bright images make it appear that Hugo lives in a cheerful and safe neighborhood, he experiences violence multiple times while trying to run a simple errand for his mother. This plays out like the lives of minority young people growing up in impoverished and violent neighborhoods where at any moment they can get hurt, or worse, just for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Soap, Soap, Soap / Jabón, Jabón, Jabón is not recommended.

—Lisette Silva
(published 7/12/15)

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[1] “Jellybean,” as a name for Black people, is a racial slur that means, “no one likes the black ones.” (Racial Slur Database, www.rsdb.org/slur/jellybean)

[2] The one Spanish expression used here, “Ay, caramba!” more likely befits “Pancho,” the not-so-bright sidekick of the 1950’s “Mexican” TV hero, “The Cisco Kid.” It was also the catch phrase of Bart Simpson.

Paco y La Planta de Chile Gigante / Paco and the Giant Chile Plant

author: Keith Polette  

illustrator: Elizabeth O. Dulemba 

Raven Tree Press, 2008 

preschool-grade 3 

Mexican American

Set in the Southwestern United States, Paco y La Planta de Chile Gigante is a re-imagined version of Jack and the Beanstalk, the classic English tale of a poor widow and her son who sells their dairy cow for magic beans. Upon learning of her son’s action, the outraged mother throws the beans on the ground where, overnight, they grow into an enormous beanstalk. Looking for treasure, Jack climbs the beanstalk to find a horrible, nasty, greedy giant who attempts to eat him, but ultimately Jack prevails in stealing the giant’s gold and other stuff and the giant falls to his doom.

In Paco, the English boy and his family morph into Latinos. Here, a poor, presumably widowed, mother sends Paco off to town to sell their dairy cow—which he does, for magic chile seeds. But rather than proudly presenting the chile seeds to his mother as Jack did with his beans, Paco plants the seeds himself to see what happens. The chile plant quickly grows up to the sky and Paco climbs it, looking for treasures.

Upon reaching the top, Paco harvests the chile blooms, enters a house of enormous proportions and meets the giant himself. Like the original tale, the giant is terrifying and tries to eat Paco; but unlike the original, he sees Paco as the savory filling for a thin, flat Mexican pancake of masa or flour:

FEE-FI-FO-FUM, I SMELL THE BLOOD OF A HUMAN ONE. BE HE THIN OR BE HE FAT, FOR MY TORTILLA I’LL GRIND HIM FLAT.

In an attempt to save himself, Paco offers the giant his chiles de oro. The chiles burst in the giant’s strong grip and spray their juice all over his face. The juice is so hot that the giant begins to cry a river of tears. With each tear, he begins to shrink and shrink until he is the size of an average man. Once the crying and shrinking stuff stop, Paco recognizes the man as—his father! Yes, years before, the father-cum-giant-cum-father tells Paco, he had climbed a giant chile plant, also looking for treasures. When he got to the top, like his son, he found chiles de oro. But, rather than just picking them, he ate them—and turned into a terrible giant.

So Paco and his father clamber down the chile plant and chop it down as the mother comes out of their house to find her long lost husband with their son. And they live happily ever after.

Paco could be seen as a charming “Latino” rendition of the original, but the devil is in the details. Dulemba’s digitally rendered artwork—on a palette of mostly desert browns, yellows and greens—is designed to reflect a “beautiful desert setting in the American Southwest.” It does. But I couldn’t make sense of the time period(s) in which it’s supposed to be set. Paco and his father appear to be dressed as Mexican campesinos who look like they came out of an old Clint Eastwood movie set in the 1800s, while the mother’s clothing and hairstyle appear to be from the 1930s or 40s.

And Polette portrays his Mexican American characters (including the giant) stereotypically:

• A Latina mother who is single and abandoned rather than a widow

• A deceptive Latino child who plants the seeds himself, rather than an innocently precocious boy, who proudly shows his mother how he is “helping” her

• A Latino father who is a dimwitted dreamer looking for treasures in the clouds, who abandons his family, and who becomes a violent thug (before he changes back)

• And finally, Latina/os who eat hot chiles turn into monsters

Then there’s the language: Although there’s a vocabulary page in which each of the Spanish words is translated into English, Paco demonstrates the type of structure that is all too often falsely marketed as “bilingual,” as this one is. But it’s not a bilingual story. It’s not a story in Spanglish, either. Rather, it’s an English-language story with Spanish words casually tossed in throughout—and worse, each Spanish word is embedded in red type. This technique, according to the liner notes, aids in the fun and learning of both languages. But the reality is that it relegates the “other” language to second-class citizenry.

I don’t know what the purpose of Paco is. If it’s an attempt to teach Spanish to English-speaking children, it fails: A few words do not make a language. If it’s an attempt to teach English to hablantes, it fails as well. If it’s an attempt to change a well-known fairy tale into a “diverse” story, placing it in another time and locale and stereotyping the characters is exactly the opposite of what it purports to do.

Paco y La Planta de Chile Gigante / Paco and the Giant Chile Plant is not recommended.

—Lisette Silva

(published 7/7/15)