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)

Skippyjon Jones and the Failed Read-Aloud

I sat down in my read-aloud chair in front of my first graders, excited to read the “Skippyjon Jones” book given to me by a retired teacher who had volunteered at my school. It had come along with a beautiful floor puzzle picturing the series’ main character, which my students loved. Although I had worked as a bilingual teacher for several years, this year I was teaching in a non-bilingual school. I was excited to read a book that used Spanish terms, and hoped that my handful of Latina/o students would enjoy sharing their knowledge to help us decode them. 

  

But it quickly became apparent that neither I nor my Spanish-speaking students were going to connect to the kind of “Spanglish” used in the “Skippyjon Jones” books, principally because it wasn’t Spanglish at all. When I was in middle school, some of the kids in my class would make fun of Spanish and of our Spanish teacher by just adding “o” to the end of the words. They would say things like, “I-o don’t like-o this class-o,” and then high-five each other and say, “Nice Spanish, dude.” “Skippyjon Jones” operates on the same principle, creating gems like “ding-a-lito,” “stinkitos,” and “snifferito.” Skippyjon Jones is a cat who pretends to be a Chihuahua and talks in a fake Mexican accent (“they are reely, reely beeg, dude”) and calls himself “El Skippito Friskito,” which drives me crazy because there are no k’s in Spanish. If one of my students started talking that way, we would have conversations about stereotypes and offensive behavior. Yet somehow these are popular children’s books.

A few pages into the read-aloud, I realized I had made a big mistake. I tripped over the fake Spanish words and ridiculous names (Poquito Tito? What does that even mean?). In order to have read the book well, I would have had to adopt a fake Mexican accent and essentially mock the way that Mexican people speak, even clapping along to fake mariachi songs with lyrics like, “Diggeree diggeroo diggerito (clap-clap) / We learned something new from Skippito! (clap-clap) He scares them to death/ with his old pickle breath,/ and that’s how we get fossilitos! (clap-clap).” Note: This is also false history. This is not, in fact, how the dinosaurs became extinct.

Tongue-tied and embarrassed, I put the book down. Later, still ashamed that I had subjected my students to even ten minutes of that horrific read-aloud, I tossed both the book and the floor puzzle in the trash. Even a gorgeous floor puzzle and a free book were not worth subjecting my students to toxic racial and linguistic stereotypes.

—Grace Cornell Gonzales

(published 10/5/13)

Where Fireflies Dance / Ahí, donde bailan la luciérnagas

author: Lucha Corpi

illustrator: Mira Reisberg

translator: Lucha Corpi

Children’s Book Press / Lee & Low, 1997

grades 1-5

Mexican, Mexican American

In Where Fireflies Dance / Ahí, donde bailan las luciérnagas, Lucha Corpi shares an autobiographical story of her childhood in Jáltipan, Mexico, on the Caribbean coast. “Where Fireflies Dance,” she writes in an author’s note, “is that place where imagination and memory blend and take on new color and voice. It is my way of paying homage to my family and bestowing their legacy of culture and love on my son, Arturo, and my granddaughter, Kiara Alyssa.”

Here, Corpi weaves together disparate elements—a ghost story, a tale of a Mexican revolutionary, a childhood love affair with a jukebox, and her eventual decision to leave Mexico and immigrate to the United States—into a story that is natural and will appeal to children. The language flows well in Spanish and in English; in fact, it is difficult to tell which version Corpi wrote first.

Reisberg’s brightly colored artwork is simple, and evocative of the Caribbean area. Most of the borders look like the kind of embroidery one would find on Mexican dresses; others reflect parts of the story—the ghost story, the rainstorm, the music, and leaving Mexico for the US. Adding warmth to the artwork are family photos, combined with one of Juan Sebastián, the iconic portrait of Emiliano Zapata and the famous painting of La Virgen de Guadalupe.

Where Fireflies Dance gives us a gentle look into a different time and place, but brings out themes (fear of and fascination with ghosts, love of music, getting into trouble with parents) that will easily resonate with young children. Highly recommended.

—Grace Cornell Gonzales
(published 9/2/13)

Storyteller’s Candle / La velita de los cuentos

author: Lucía González

illustrator: Lulu Delacre

translator: Lucía González (?)

Children’s Book Press / Lee & Low, 2008

grades 1-4

Puerto Rican

Because of language and cultural barriers, people who immigrate to the US can often experience public institutions such as libraries as unwelcoming and inaccessible. In 1929, Pura Belpré became the first Puerto Rican librarian to be hired by the New York City Public Library system where, at the 115^th Street branch (and later the 110^th Street branch), she instituted bilingual story hours, purchased Spanish-language books, and implemented cultural programs. Belpré was an advocate who helped shape the public library into a community space in which the Spanish language was used and valued.

Told through the eyes of a young Puerto Rican girl who moves to New York and meets Pura Belpré, The Storyteller’s Candle / La velita de los cuentos captures the magic of the public library in a way that is unusual in children’s books. Though the story is heavy handed in delivering the message that the public library is for everyone, it’s an important message nonetheless.

Delacre’s artwork is exceptional on two levels. Beginning with sepia tones to take the story back in time, she layered oil washes and paper collage onto bristol paper that she had primed with clear gesso. The paper collage consists of pieces of an original copy of The New York Times from January 6, 1930; each piece contains information that correlates with a particular aspect of the story. And Delacre’s softly toned oil washes show the many faces of the Puerto Rican people—indeed, “Rainbow People”—with skin tone, hair, bone structure and facial features different from each other.

However, there are two major problems with the English version of this story. Usually when words are left in Spanish in the English version of a text, it is because they have important cultural connotations that would be lost in translation. Here the story seems to be randomly peppered with Spanish words that add nothing and only serve to make the English version awkward and tokenize the characters as “Spanish speakers.” For example, when the children ask if they can go into the library, their aunt answers, “The library isn’t for noisy niños like you.” Who talks like that?

It is also awkward that, in the English version, there is dialogue in English about how the characters don’t speak English. For instance, the aunt says, “We don’t speak English, and the people in there don’t speak Spanish.” It is confusing, to say the least, and the story would have been much better in the English version without dialogue.

Despite these problems, Pura Belpré’s story is an important one. So, La velita de los cuentos (Spanish version) is highly recommended. On the other hand, The Storyteller’s Candle (English version) is way not recommended.

—Grace Cornell Gonzales
(published 9/2/13)

Angel’s Kite / La estrella de Angel

author: Alberto Blanco

translator: Dan Bellm
illustrator: Rodolfo Morales

Children’s Book Press / Lee & Low, 1994

grades 2-5

Mexican

At first, I was excited to pick up Angel’s Kite. Alberto Blanco is a prominent Mexican poet, and I was intrigued to see a children’s book, written in fluent, gorgeous Spanish by a Mexican author, published in the US. However, I almost immediately began to have my doubts.

In this poetic, mystical story, a young kite maker’s passion and determination result in the return of the town’s missing church bell, which had disappeared for no known reason. Although there are complex implications about the loss of the bell—Was it stolen by the priest and sold to a foreign collector (which implies both dishonest clergy and colonialism)? Or, could it have been stolen by the “revolutionaries” and melted down for cannons (which implies something about the relationship between the church and the Mexican Revolution)? Or, could it have disappeared by magic?—there’s no exploration of any of them.

While the rest of the townspeople get on with their lives, Angel creates his most beautiful kite ever—holding the image of the entire town, including the missing bell. The kite escapes and is found—without the bell—which magically reappears in the church tower.

Although the Spanish rendition is beautiful, I’m just not sure whether young children would relate to a story about a young man who expresses his agency, not through confronting the corrupt clergyman or organizing his community around creating a new church bell, but through making a kite.

Bellm’s English translation is clunky and awkward. On one page, for example, the Spanish reads: “Hasta que una tarde, para sacudirse la nostalgia por la campana desaparecida, Angel decidió hacer el papalote más bonito del mundo. Lobo, Chino, y Rabito, sus tres perritos, sus inseparables compañeros, estaban a su lado.”

The literal English translation would be this: “Until one afternoon, to shake off his nostalgia for the bell that had disappeared, Angel decided to make the most beautiful kite in the world. Lobo, Chino, and Rabito, his three dogs, his inseparable companions, were at his side.”

This is Bellm’s translation: “One day, to shake himself out of missing that lost bell so much, Angel decided to make the most beautiful kite in the world. His three trusty dogs named Lobo, Chino, and Rabito were at his side. (Their names meant Wolf Dog, Curly Head and Little Tail.)”

Rodolfo Morales was an amazing artist, firmly rooted in the land, culture and mythos of Oaxaca. His collages—made of silk, lace, silver stars, found objects—are world famous. But the same collage art technique just does not make a positive impact in this children’s book. Rather, the people look like they’ve been beaten up: their noses and eyes are black, their faces are distorted and expressionless, their bodies are weirdly out of proportion. 

In Spanish, Angel’s Kite / La estrella de Angel alludes to a rich history and uses magical realism to portray a certain time and place. I believe that students in, say, a Latin American literature class, might enjoy reading and discussing it. But as a children’s story, Angel’s Kite comes off as weird and unappealing. Not recommended.

—Grace Cornell Gonzales
(published 9/2/13)

Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir

author: Deborah A. Miranda

Heyday, 2012 

high school-up

Ohlone / Costanoan-Esselen, Chumash

“Story is the most powerful force in the world,” Deborah writes, “in our world, maybe in all worlds. Story is culture. Story, like culture, is constantly moving. It is a river where no gallon of water is the same gallon it was one second ago. Yet it is still the same river. It exists as a truth. As a whole. Even if the whole is in constant change. In fact, because of that constant change.”

For better or for worse, young Deborah never had to endure the daily humiliations of fourth grade in California, where children are taught the dominant discourse about the California missions. Where non-Indian children (and their parents) construct “mission” dioramas with beneficent padres instructing and supervising willing Indian neophytes as they learn how to work. Where Indian children—especially California Indian children—shrink into their seats, trying to disappear.

The real story—people massacred, children violated, land and languages stolen, cultures broken beyond recognition—is rarely told.

After asking her young son’s teacher to let him pass on the project—and being refused—an Indian parent I know allowed him to construct the required model mission. “So Nick built his mission and brought it home,” she told me. “And we built a fire and we talked about it again, how Indian people were enslaved and died building missions and living in missions. Then we put it in the fire and burned it and I promised Nick that I would always stick up for him and challenge anyone who would keep opening up these scars.”

“All my life,” Deborah writes, “I have heard only one story about California Indians: godless, dirty, stupid, primitive, ugly, passive, drunken, immoral, lazy, weak-willed people who might make good workers if properly trained and motivated. What kind of story is that to grow up with?”

Bad Indians is this story—the story of the missionization of California. In constructing Bad Indians, Deborah creates “a space where voices can speak after long and often violently imposed silence.” For Deborah, the stories seeped “out of old government documents, BIA forms, field notes, the diaries of explorers and priests, the occasional writings or testimony from Indians, family stories, photographs, newspaper articles.” Together, these disparate voices belie the dominant discourse; they are stories of tenacious survival. And they are Deborah’s “mission project.”

But Bad Indians is more than these voices; it’s Deborah’s family’s story as well. In it, I’m reminded of something that Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that has recently been channeled through Kelly Clarkson: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Actually, Nietzsche wrote it with more elegance: “That which does not kill us makes us stronger."

Deborah’s life’s twists and turns have brought her to this place, to find her ancestors’ stories, to tell her own family’s stories, to connect them—and to heal. Some childhood memories, some faded photographs, some snippets of stories written down word for word by an anthropologist, some paragraphs from old textbooks. A lesser author might have crafted a novel spanning the generations, a linear novel, maybe a chapter for each character. But Deborah didn’t and wouldn’t do that; it would have dishonored her ancestors. Rather, she looks at what is—the pieces, the shards of a broken mirror—and interprets, imagines, wonders. If she doesn’t know a thing, she says so. Throughout, she is in awe of the voices, drawings, photos, whatever she can find—all treasured gifts, entrusted to her by the elders and ancestors she never got to meet.

“Who we are is where we are from,” Deborah writes. “Where we are from is who we are.”

On a Saturday morning, Deborah and relatives slowly and mindfully circle the grounds of the Mission Soledad, picking up bone fragments:

Here is a finger joint, here a tooth. Here a shattered section of femur, here something unidentifiable except for the lacy pattern that means human being. Our children run to us with handfuls of ancestors they keep calling ‘fossils’ because youth and privilege don’t let the truth sink in yet.” As they gently bury the tiny pieces of bones, Xu-lin, we say to our broken ancestors: xu-lin, sprinkling sage, mugwort, and tobacco over the small grave. Xu-lin, we whisper as the earth takes back. Xu-lin, a plea and a promise: return.

Bad Indians is not easy reading. Deborah draws connections between the violence of the California missions, the violence perpetrated on the descendants of the “Mission Indians,” the violence she witnessed at home, and the rapes she endured as a child: “Imprisonment. Whippings. Betrayal. Rape.” And she doesn’t mince words: “Erasure is a bitch, isn’t it?”

At the end of Bad Indians, Deborah quotes Tom King (Cherokee), who wrote in The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative (Toronto, Publishers Group Canada, 2003), “Take it. It’s yours. Do with it what you will. But don’t say in the years to come that you would have lived your life differently if only you had heard this story. You’ve heard it now.”

If you’re a fourth-grade teacher who has ever taught a “mission” unit, if you’re a parent of a fourth-grader who has ever helped her child construct a “mission diorama,” if you’ve ever admired the architecture of a California mission, if you’ve ever harbored the thought that Ishi was the “last of his tribe,” you no longer have an excuse for perpetuating the horrors. Don’t say you didn’t know.

In Bad Indians, Deborah Miranda has created an achingly beautiful mosaic out of the broken shards of her people and herself, gently glued together with heartbreak and scars, memories and perseverance and hope. Her writing is crisp and clear and eminently readable, with passion in place of polemic. Deborah is a strong, brave, compassionate spirit, and I am honored to call her “friend.”

Bad Indians is highly recommended.

—Beverly Slapin
(published 8/3/13)

Gringolandia

(Note: This is an updated version of the review, which corrects the location of the swimming pool depicted on the cover of Gringolandia.)

author: Lyn Miller-Lachmann

Curbstone Press, 2009

grades 7-up 

Chilean, Chilean American

During the years of the US-installed and –supported Chilean military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean secret police (DINA) operated clandestine prisons in which they tortured or executed thousands of people. Villa Grimaldi—which the torturers referred to as “el Palacio de la Risa” (the “Palace of Laughter”)—was one of four of these torture centers on the outskirts of Santiago. From mid-1974 to mid-1978, the DINA killed or disappeared 236 of the 4,500 prisoners held there.

Sometime towards the end of the Pinochet regime, the torture centers were all but razed, probably as an attempt to erase from public consciousness what happened there. In 1978, Villa Grimaldi was sold to a developer and, after a public campaign was launched in the name of human rights and historical memory, the infamous torture center was transformed into the Villa Grimaldi Corporación Parque por la Paz, a memorial of the lives taken there.

Part of what is left of “El Palacio de la Risa” is a nondescript swimming pool that had been used in the tortures. Now, with discolored green tiles covering the bottom, it is fenced off for both citizens and tourists to view. A photograph of this swimming pool—with a dove flying out of it—is the cover of Lyn Miller-Lachmann’s amazing young adult novel, Gringolandia.

Having Chilean friends who were tortured in those years—as do I—Lyn told me that she started working on Gringolandia in 2004, after the revelations of the tortures committed by military police personnel of the US Army and other US agencies conducted at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. Then, she said, as during the Pinochet dictatorship, people were generally shrugging off torture as an aberration or justifying it as a way of obtaining information. Meanwhile, FOX media, in its award-winning drama series “24,” helped create the kind of division and suspicion to convince people to “follow the leader” rather than protest.

Meanwhile, the stories of the Chilean people—victims, survivors, and disappeared—were not being told and, given the responsibility of our government for installing and supporting the dictatorship that tortured, murdered or disappeared some 35,000 people, Lyn told me, she set out to create a young adult novel that “was real, honest and truthful” to tell those stories.

Much of Gringolandia is narrated by Daniel Aguilar, an immigrant teenager living with his mother and younger sister in Madison, Wisconsin. Part One, entitled “Then,” is told in third person; detailing Daniel’s beating and the horrific arrest and torture of his father, Marcelo, an underground journalist and revolutionary, by the Chilean secret police.

Someone grabbed Daniel by the hair and jerked his head back. He looked up into the covered face of the tall one. The boss. The man’s eyes were black and terrifying in the shadow, and his mouth, a little round hole cut out of the mask, moved like the mouth of a robot.

“Boy, you watch this,” he snarled. “This is what happens to communists.”

The helmeted soldiers left. The tall man crouched and ground his knee into Daniel’s shoulder blades. Rough hands in his hair twisted his head back. The other three masked men pounced on Daniel’s father, aiming blows at his head and body. His glasses flew off and were crushed beneath a black boot. He fell to his knees. Blood ran down his face into his beard.

Daniel closed his eyes and tried to shut out the sound of his father coughing and choking, horrible gasps. They’re beating the life out of Papá. Someone…make them stop. When Daniel opened his eyes again, his father was on hands and knees. A soldier’s boot struck the side of his head. He flopped onto his back and lay motionless.

“Let’s get him out of here.”

Part Two, “Now,” begins almost six years later. While Papá remains imprisoned in Chile, Daniel, his mother and younger sister have fled to Madison, Wisconsin. Mamá works with the Latin America Solidarity Committee, and Daniel, now 17, has carved out his own niche: a junior in high school, he plays lead guitar in a rock band and is dating a minister’s daughter. But Daniel is also traumatized and silenced; he keeps his head low and doesn’t call attention to himself. “Here, nobody talks about it,” he says, “at least not outside social studies class. And when they do it in class, I make my mind go somewhere else.”

When he drives to the airport to pick up his newly-released father, Daniel finds Papá damaged in body and spirit: partially paralyzed, Marcelo is a self-destructive alcoholic who has nightmares, lashes out at his family and can’t stand to be touched—and is bitter at having been exiled to the place he calls “Gringolandia.” It would appear that the dictatorship has succeeded in silencing both Daniel and Marcelo.

In Parts Three and Four, we meet Daniel’s girlfriend, Courtney—“La Gringa”—a well meaning but naïve, self-centered young woman who passionately wants to be part of something she doesn’t understand—and unwittingly comes close to sabotaging the survival of both the family here and the underground movement in Chile.

Although the dictatorship succeeds in breaking up Daniel’s parents’ marriage, it doesn’t succeed in silencing Marcelo—and it leaves Daniel with an important decision to make: Should he remain in the relative safety of family and friends in Madison, or risk torture and death by joining his father in combating a brutal dictatorship in Chile? What Daniel decides will have teen readers thinking deeply and making connections between the microcosm of their own families and the macrocosm of the world outside.

In Part Five, “A Bird Named Pablo: A Metaphor,” the dictatorship has been defeated by, of all things, a plebiscite, and Marcelo, back in Chile, is healing from his wounds—physically and spiritually. Here, he has written an incomparably beautiful story about a conure (a protected species in Chile)—tortured by a torturer—whom Marcelo has rescued and rehabilitated—and who builds a family of his own. A metaphor that’s too close to home to be a metaphor.

Lyn Miller-Lachmann’s book is complex and multilayered and beautifully written. It takes twists and turns and shifting perspectives, but the overarching theme is Daniel’s struggle with guilt over his father’s arrest, and his struggle to reconnect with a person who is substantially different than the father he knew and loved. “Papa’s words race through my mind,” he says.

I want to think of him as a hero and me as the son of someone who did great things. Like investigating secret prisons and bearing witness to what went on there. But there’s a huge empty space in my chest when I think of all the time we missed together. Five years, three months, and sixteen days, to be exact. And when I walk out of the studio, my fists are again clenched, and my neck and shoulder ache, as I think of how he put us in danger, ordered us out of the country—and still wants to go back there.

The story of how one small family survives a cruel and sadistic regime is a gift to all of the survivors of dictatorships, those who have become permanent residents of the US and those who have repatriated. Without polemic, without didacticism, Lyn Miller-Lachmann has created a disturbing, thought provoking novel that succeeds in being “real, honest and truthful.” Gringolandia is highly recommended.

—Beverly Slapin
(published 7/15/13)

Note: A number of excellent videos exist about Salvador Allende, the 1973 coup, the Pinochet dictatorship, and the quest for justice. They include: the three-part The Battle of Chile, directed by Patricio Guzmán (1975, 1977, 1979); Chile: Obstinate Memory, directed by Patricio Guzmán (1997); The Pinochet Case, directed by Patricio Guzmán (2001); A Promise to the Dead, directed by Peter Raymont (2007); The Judge and the General, directed by Elizabeth Farnsworth and Patricio Lanfranco (2008); Archeology of Memory: Villa Grimaldi, directed by Quique Cruz and Marilyn Mulford (2009); Salvador Allende, directed by Patricio Guzmán (2011); and  No!, directed by Pablo Larraín (2013).  —BHS

Revolution of Evelyn Serrano

author: Sonia Manzano

Scholastic, 2012

grades 6-up

Puerto Rican

Fifteen-year-old Evelyn Serrano sees herself as an ordinary girl living in El Barrio, Spanish Harlem, in 1969. She has just started a new job in a department store and is proud of her ability to earn money for herself and to help her family. Then a flamboyant stranger comes to town—her grandmother, whom she barely knows, and who does not get along at all with Evelyn’s solid, self-sacrificing mother. Evelyn learns that, decades ago on the island, her grandmother left her mother to live with relatives while she got involved with the Puerto Rican nationalist movement. 

Conflict between grandmother and mother boils over when Evelyn’s grandmother helps the Young Lords Party as they try to organize the neighborhood and obtain meeting space from the First Spanish United Methodist Church that the family attends. These efforts culminate in the historic takeover of the church in December 1969, an event in which Evelyn, grandmother, and even her mother participate.

Sonia Manzano, best known for her portrayal of Maria on the PBS children’s series, “Sesame Street,” offers an engaging look at a key historical event of the civil rights movement through the lens of mother-daughter tensions that span generations. The rebellious grandmother and conservative mother turn the generational stereotype upside down and allow Manzano to give readers a window into Puerto Rico’s history and the at-times violent nationalist struggles of the mid-twentieth century. The focus, however, remains on the spunky protagonist, her family, and her community at a time of renewed conflict that in the end changes and empowers Evelyn both on a personal level and in relation to the world around her. Recommended.

—Lyn Miller-Lachmann
(published 7/15/13)

Dolores Huerta: A Hero to Migrant Workers

author: Sarah Warren

illustrator: Robert Casilla

Marshall Cavendish, 2012

grades 2-5

Mexican, Mexican American

Dolores Huerta, born in New Mexico in 1930, was and is a strong Latina and is indeed a hero to agricultural workers everywhere. Yet, there are few picture books about her; if at all, she is generally depicted as secondary to César Chávez, together with whom she founded the National Farm Workers Association. In creating this excellent portrait focusing on Huerta’s efforts to empower migrant workers, first-time picture book author Warren remedies this shortcoming.

In Warren’s engaging, spare and accessible prose, complemented by Casilla’s vibrant watercolor-and-pastel illustrations, the workers are real people—young and elderly, afraid, worried, outraged and resolute. On each double-page spread, young readers will learn about the farm worker struggles in the 1960s and discover the reasons Huerta is a teacher, a detective, a friend, a warrior, an organizer, a storyteller, a peacemaker, a mother, a woman, a fortune-teller, and a hunter; and, coming full circle, a teacher. I use the word “discover” because Warren, demonstrating the best practices of teaching, shows rather than tells.

One of the early spreads describes how Huerta came to her work:

Dolores is a detective. She follows the kids home. She asks the moms why their kids are hungry and sick. She asks the dads why their children don’t have shoes. The parents say their bosses don’t pay them enough money for good food or new clothes or a visit to the doctor. These parents work hard. They pick grapes all morning. They pick grapes all afternoon. They pick grapes until night, but they are paid too little and shoes cost too much.

Casilla’s naturalistic paintings show Dolores Huerta as she grows and matures from a young teacher who questions why her young students have no shoes, to a seasoned labor organizer who “teaches people how to work as a team.” Here are the faces of Huerta with her children, of her tired and hungry students, of the desperate agricultural workers she organizes, and of the well-dressed bosses she confronts. The one defect is that all of the picket signs are depicted in English—except for one, in which the word “huelga” is partially obscured. I remember walking boycott picket lines in which many UFW banners and chants were in Spanish—most notably, “¡Huelga!” and “¡Sí, se puede!”

With a helpful annotated timeline and “learn more” page as backmatter, Dolores Huerta: A Hero to Migrant Workers is a celebration of Dolores Huerta’s life and leadership, and is highly recommended.

—Beverly Slapin
(published 7/10/13)

Legend of El Dorado: A Latin American Tale

author: Beatriz Vidal

author: Nancy Van Laan

illustrator: by Beatriz Vidal

Alfred A. Knopf, 1991

preschool-grade 4

Latin American, Chibcha

In an introductory note, Vidal writes that, as a child in Argentina, she first heard the stories about El Dorado from her father; and much later, she came across the “original source,” which inspired her to paint this “rich and fascinating treasure.” Vidal showed her version to her colleague, Van Laan, who “had the right poetic voice,” and the two decided to collaborate on something that would appeal to young readers “without losing the romantic, tragic flavor of the tale.”

There are many, many variations of the El Dorado story. Some contain a cacique, who covered his body with gold dust each day before jumping into the lake to bathe. Some involve the lake itself, into which gold would be thrown in political or spiritual ceremonies. Some contain a description of the city as a vast kingdom where gold was so plentiful that it was used to construct whole houses. Some involve women and children being thrown into the lake, either as sacrifices or as punishment. Some involve a cacique’s wife who throws herself into the lake to escape a horrible punishment for her sins, and survives there as a deity. And other variations are so violent and gory as to compete with a Mexican telenovela gone rogue.

In Vidal and Van Laan’s version, the wife and daughter of a wealthy Chibcha “king,” lured by the dazzling sight of a ruby-eyed emerald serpent, disappear into the waters of Lake Guatavita. The high priest speaks to the serpent, who assures him that the “queen” and “princess” are safe and happy and will be reunited with the king, but only if he rules wisely. So each year, he covers himself with gold dust (thereby becoming known as “El Dorado”) and throws his treasures and himself into the lake to remind the serpent of its promise. One year he doesn’t reappear—the serpent has kept its promise: the king is reunited with his lost family.

Vidal’s mixed-media art—lush tropical scenes in bejeweled tones of mostly blues, greens, and reds—are reminiscent of Paul Gauguin’s post-impressionist work. The Indian subjects are mystical and primitive, and perfectly complement the text, which focuses, not on the people as fully developed humans, but as mystical and primitive. There’s lots of gold throughout. The title on the cover shines. The endpapers depict tropical birds flitting around golden beads. There’s gold dust on the king’s body, on the earthen ground, and in and at the bottom of the lake.

Before the conquistadores got to them, there were some 500,000 Chibcha people[1], who lived in the high valleys around what are now Bogotá and Tunja, Colombia. They were centralized politically and their economy was based mostly on intensive agriculture and considerable trade, which provided the gold used for ornaments and offerings. In the 16^th Century, the Spanish invasions crushed the Chibcha political structure, and in the next 200 years, the language was all but obliterated as well.[2]

What have been mislabeled as Indigenous “myths” or “legends” are cultural histories and teachings, passed down from generation to generation. Since the Chibcha political and economic systems were never based on gold, the “legend of El Dorado” is not, and never was, a Chibcha legend.

A brief digression about the history of the “legend of El Dorado”:

In the early part of the 16^th Century, fantastic stories circulated throughout Europe about a city of immense wealth somewhere in the Americas, a place of untold riches, a place that contained so much gold that it later became known as “El Dorado.” In this city, it was said, the people adorned themselves, head to toe, with gold; they even painted themselves and the trees and the rocks with gold! Heavily financed and heavily armed by the royals and other wealthy families, the explorers and conquistadores raced to the Western Hemisphere to find, conquer, and occupy El Dorado and the people who lived there.

But wherever they went, the locals pointed this way and that way—anywhere but where they were. And everywhere the conquistadores landed, the story became more and more embellished. Now there was a tribe—somewhere else—high up in the Andes Mountains—that way—where the cacique painted himself with gold dust each day before jumping into the lake to bathe! Or down there in the impenetrable jungles, where the people threw gold and precious jewels into the water to appease the spirits! Or over there, in the barren deserts, where could be found gold nuggets as large as suckling pigs! Indeed, the Spaniards, who wanted so much to believe that they were soon to encounter El Dorado, began to call the cacique of this unknown tribe El Dorado.

After Cortés sacked the great Mexica Empire in 1519 and Pizarro, the Inca Empire in 1532-33, the conquistadores found some gold—but not very much—among the Indigenous peoples living along the coast of South America. In the years that followed, the conquistadores rampaged up and down the coast, plundering Indigenous towns and villages and slaughtering hundreds of  thousands, if not millions, of people. But, of course, no one ever did find El Dorado—because it existed only in the searchers’ fevered, gold-crazed imaginations.

One of the things that survived these atrocities was a story published in the journal of Sebastián de Benalcázar, a chief lieutenant of Pizarro’s and a ruthless conquistador who claimed that an “Indian” had told him about El Dorado. (This is the account that Vidal names as the “original source” of her story.) But two other scenarios are totally possible and more likely: one, that the anonymous Indian was one of many who made up these stories to deflect the Spanish (and let’s not forget the British and German) forces away from their own communities; or, two, that de Benalcázar invented the story in order to bankroll new projects, justify new incursions, and recruit new soldiers.

So Van Laan’s version is her adaptation of Vidal’s father’s adaptation combined with the adaptation of a mass murderer who undoubtedly embellished the story (if he didn’t actually write it himself). And from all this we get: A picture book for children.

The major reviewers loved The Legend of El Dorado: Booklist praised it as “a splendid addition to folklore shelves and useful for showing the richness of Indian culture prior to the arrival of European explorers.” Kirkus suggested that it was “just right for giving added dimension to a unit on explorers.” And Publishers Weekly called it a “splendid pairing of Van Laan’s suave retelling and Vidal’s richly colored illustrations—meticulously executed and imbued with primitive charm—capture all the beauty and mysticism of a culture from long ago and far away.”

What’s wrong with crafting a picture book out of a legend—that never existed—about a fabulously wealthy tribe in South America—that never existed? And leaving out the fact that versions of this legend were spread around Europe as a rationale for greed and genocide? Indeed, Vidal and Van Laan’s The Legend of El Dorado, as a picture book, is dishonest: It promotes a worldview that justifies rapacious colonialism, Manifest Destiny, economic determinism and neo-liberalism.

When The Legend of El Dorado was being created, written, illustrated, and finally published, Vidal and Van Laan (and/or the editors and publisher) either didn’t know about the awful repercussions of this fake “legend,” didn’t want to know about them, or didn’t think they were important. Or did know and didn’t care.

In fact, the whole concept of teaching children about “myths” like these is that, absent any cultural and/or historical contexts in which they were created, they portray Indigenous peoples as ignorant, superstitious, materialistic, and therefore deserving of conquest. Or being wiped out entirely. It’s a setup. Now, more than ever, we have to be responsible enough to be truthful, to talk about history, not gloss over appalling things like genocide.

There is no excuse for this; not even when it’s couched in ridiculous, incomprehensible, New Age romanticism that neither children nor teachers will understand:

“As bits and pieces of the treasure are recovered,” Vidal writes, “the real El Dorado begins to unfold, the one that has lain dormant, waiting to be discovered, not by conquerors but by true seekers. For El Dorado is much more than the physical and glittering gold: it is that Inner City of the spirit, which one needs the utmost purity of heart to enter.”

All of our children deserve way better than this. Our Indian children do not need further humiliation and our non-Indian children do not need more affirmation of their alleged superiority.  The Legend of El Dorado is not recommended.

—Beverly Slapin
(published 6/17/13)

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[1] There’s lots of available research on the historical Chibcha economy; this information is from the Encyclopedia Britannica.

[2] Many reputable organizations are working to recover Indigenous languages in the Americas. Among them are: Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival, Endangered Language Fund, and Indigenous Language Institute.

Friends from the Other Side / Amigos del otro lado

author: Gloria Anzaldúa

translator: Gloria Anzaldúa

illustrator: Consuelo Méndez
Children’s Book Press / Lee & Low, 1993

preschool-grade 4

Mexican, Mexican American

In Friends from the Other Side / Amigos del otro lado, Prietita, a young Chicana, meets Joaquin, a boy who, with his mother, has crossed the border from Mexico without documents and is living in poverty on the outskirts of town. After defending Joaquin from a group of local boys who call him a “mojado” and try to throw stones at him, Prietita befriends him. When immigration agents come looking for people without documents, she helps Joaquin and his mother hide in the house of the local curandera, who later teaches her how to use herbs to help heal the sores on Joaquin’s arm.

Friends from the Other Side stands out among picture books dealing with immigration as a frank portrayal of the difficult lives of undocumented people on this side of the border. Far from the rosy picture of life in the US painted by many children’s books about immigrant lives, Joaquin and his mother are portrayed as living in poverty, facing discrimination from community members, and constantly wary of immigration raids. Also present is the tension and horizontal violence that can occur between Mexican and Mexican-American people in the US. For example, the neighborhood boys who are Mexican American, tell Joaquin, “We don’t want any more mojados here.” When immigration agents arrive in the neighborhood, the Chicano agent laughs and jokes with the Mexican-American residents. These complex dynamics are well done. 

Méndez’ colored pencil-and-graphite illustrations, on a subdued palette of mostly browns and greens, genuinely evoke the lands of the southwest. Yet, the people’s faces are strange looking and the asymmetrical proportions change on every page. Both Prietita’s and Joaquin’s noses, for instance, are sometimes small and sometimes bizarrely large. This constant distortion makes it difficult to connect with the characters.

 
The language is stilted in both Spanish and English. The dialogue is unnatural; Prietita and Joaquin don’t sound like children. In some places, the English reads as significantly less natural than the Spanish. For example, the Chicano immigration agent asks in English, “Does anyone know of any illegals living in the area?” Yet in Spanish he asks, more colloquially, “¿Saben ustedes dónde se esconden los mojados?”

In the English version where Joaquin’s mother offers Prietita food, there is this: “She...knew that they would offer a guest the last of their food and go hungry rather than appear bad-mannered.” Here, the emphasis is on “appearance” rather than generosity. The Spanish version, on the other hand, reads: “[S]upo que compartirían su poca comida aunque después pasarán hambre.” This suggests that a certain degree of cultural awareness has been lost in translation.

The biggest problem with Friends from the Other Side is that, while it appears to portray undocumented immigrants sympathetically, it ultimately patronizes them. From the beginning, Joaquin and his mother seem like helpless victims. Even the way that Joaquin is drawn shows him as skinny, sick, and awkward. He cannot stand up for himself with the neighborhood boys. The only agency that he and his mother seem to have is offering food to Prietita when they are clearly too poor to put food on their own table. Prietita refuses, but notes the “pride in their faces.” This whole dynamic plays into the common stereotype about the nobility of poverty and essentializes the characters.

The real focus here is not on Joaquin and his mother, but on Prietita. She saves the day again and again, defending Joaquin from the neighborhood boys, deliberately befriending him, giving him food in a way that doesn’t damage his “pride,” hiding him and his mother from immigration, and finally curing his sores. Joaquin and his mother are essentially voiceless and lacking in agency. In the end, the curandera decides to teach Prietita how to make the paste to heal Joaquin’s arms. It’s awkward that, although Joaquin is right there, there’s no implication that he could also learn to heal himself. In truth, the message is one of charity rather than empowerment or solidarity.

While I have great respect for Gloria Anzaldúa as an intellectual and an author, and while I think that very critically conscious teachers and parents could possibly use this book to good effect, I can’t recommend it.

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