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) 

Last Stop on Market Street

author: Matt de la Peña 

illustrator: Christian Robinson 

Putnam, 2015 

all grades

Last Stop on Market Street is a stunning contribution to the legacy and future of book art and storytelling for children; no wonder, then, that it has won a Newbery Award, Caldecott Honor, and Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor. With distinctive, poetic text by Matt de la Peña and evocative illustrations by Christian Robinson, Last Stop on Market Street reveals the creative potential of a powerful cross-cultural author-illustrator partnership. In words and pictures, it embraces substantive diversity in children’s literature, diversity that not only helps us see ourselves and one another, but that also asks that we make our world anew.

On a Sunday after church, CJ and his Nana begin their weekly journey across town on a public bus, eventually disembarking at the last stop on Market Street, where they walk down a broken-down street with broken-down buildings until they reach their destination: a soup kitchen. Along the way, they encounter an array of people, including the bus driver, a blind man, a woman holding a jar of butterflies, teens plugged in to their iPods, and a guitar player.

Sitting inside the bus, watching as others travel by car, bicycle, and skateboard, CJ questions the differences he notices between his own life and the lives of others. As she answers him, Nana demonstrates thoughtfulness and regard for variation in the natural world and in our flawed but beautiful human communities.

Last Stop on Market Street follows a child’s discoveries as he ventures beyond home. A traditional European storyline would feature a child’s adventures into inviting spaces full of wonder and delight, riches at the ready. Here, though, CJ and Nana do not journey through a readymade world; rather, they make the world as they go along. For CJ, part of that making is reckoning with his own desire for belonging in a world marked by disparities.

Whereas many reviewers see Nana’s wisdom as what determines the book’s value, I want to focus on CJ’s questions. Specifically, I want to consider how these questions make Last Stop on Market Street deserving of the year’s most prestigious awards as well as how they might be reoriented for adults reviewers to enable more generative thinking about book evaluations when diversity matters.

Across the book, CJ asks his grandmother six questions:

• “How come we gotta wait for the bus in all this wet?”

• “Nana, how come we don’t got a car?”

• “How come we always gotta go here after church?”

• “How come that man can’t see?”

• (Implicitly asking for an iPod): “Sure wish I had one of those.”

• “How come it’s always so dirty over here?”

On the face of it, CJ is asking for what kids (and adults) often desire: to be unconstrained and worry-free, to have easy access to pleasure and fun. Stories can create this kind of world for children; and many adults think this is what stories for young readers should do. Instead, Last Stop on Market Street honors the realities that exist beyond the readymade worlds of comfort and privilege. CJ doesn’t want to imagine himself far away from what he sees, but he does want to know why the world is as it is and where he belongs in it. Gaps in resources and opportunities are as present in CJ’s reality as the lowering and lifting of the bus making its stops. He is right to ask questions, and his Nana never undermines the legitimacy of his questions. Rather, she answers them by modeling attentiveness, wonder, and reverence for the lovely particularity of their human encounters on a rainy Sunday.

Robinson’s illustrations show a distinctive entry point, midpoint and eventual endpoint for each of CJ and his Nana’s interactions. Eyes meet, hands touch, bodies tilt forward, lean over, straighten up, respond. The rhythm of people making room for one another and attending to one another animates every scene. Nana creates opportunities for CJ to notice, to attend thoughtfully to his world. While CJ’s questions highlight important material differences between people, Nana directs his attention to the unique, often momentary, connections that are possible when we engage with others. Without undermining the reality of material disparities, these connections show that all people have the potential to draw beauty from ordinary experience. And they show that beauty is in the making, in the shared work of creating these connections, as when Nana, CJ, and the blind man all close their eyes to listen to the guitar player’s song.

Throughout the book, with his Nana’s guidance, CJ becomes immersed in making the world around him through actual and metaphorical interactions.

Usually, when considering how diversity is represented in children’s literature, reviewers ask some variation of the following two questions:

• How accurate are representations of language, culture, setting, and relationships?

• Are characters fully realized and shown to have agency?

While these questions highlight character strengths and authorial insight, they miss the significant ways an author places characters in an unequal world, which is where all children live.

Last Stop on Market Street offers us some clues about the new questions we could be asking. In an effort to encourage reviewers to look beyond the standard concerns when reading and evaluating diverse representations in children’s literature, I have translated CJ’s questions into the following “adult” questions:

• How is difference constructed, and what does it mean for a character’s belonging in an unequal world?

• How is material wealth acknowledged or taken for granted in a story, especially at a time of extreme poverty for fully a third of the children living in the US?

• How are characters’ lives and perspectives interrelated and interdependent? How are these interconnections shown in text and image?

• How and by whom are perceptions of difference transformed, and with what implications for future relations?

• How are disparities in the funding and support of community infrastructures acknowledged? Are inequities seen to have a material effect on children’s opportunities to explore and become their fullest selves?

These questions beckon from beneath CJ’s apparently simple queries. Like Nana, Last Stop on Market Street underscores their relevance with equal parts gentleness and insistence. We should pay attention to the questions, let them take root in us. We should also pay attention to the world- making that unfolds in their wake, both in the book, as CJ and Nana partner in treasuring the particularity of each encounter, and in the future we are beginning to envision for children’s literature.

 Last Stop on Market Street is an award-winning book, not only because the language is lyrical and the illustrations are alive with rhythm and warmth, but also because it is a groundbreaking story. It is a story where it matters that CJ is a Black child spending Sunday with his grandmother. It is a story where it matters still more that CJ and his Nana ask each other hard questions and make space for complex answers. It is a story where it matters that we, too, might learn to make our world as we go along.

Thank you, Matt, Christian, and the Newbery Committee for taking up the imaginative work of making the world of children’s literature what it can be. As for the rest of us who care about children and the worlds they grow up in, let’s heed Nana’s invitation at the end of Last Stop on Market Street: “Now, come on.” There are more worlds to make, more encounters to be had as we discover all the ways that diversity is fundamental to human experience.

So, friends? Come on. Our bus is here.

—Patricia Enciso

(published 1/26/16)

This review, in a slightly different form, first appeared in Latin@s in Kid Lit (latinosinkidlit.com). We thank Latin@s in Kid Lit for permission.

Enchanted Air: Two Cultures, Two Wings: A Memoir

author: Margarita Engle

illustrator: Edel Rodriguez 

Atheneum, 2015 

grades 5-up 

Cuban American

Margarita Engle’s parents met in 1947, when her father, an artist from the US, visited the Museo Romántico in Trinidad de Cuba, her mother’s hometown; “it was love at first sight.” Although they didn’t speak each other’s language, he proposed marriage, and she said yes.

Margarita grew up between two languages and two cultures. In this memoir in free verse, she describes her childhood trips to Cuba, her father’s Jewish family, and her life in the United States where—as “a misfit bookworm” and half-Cuban during the Cold War—she never fit in with her peers in Southern California. She describes the irony of a mother cut off from her family by the revolution, also hounded by US government agents, and shunned by neighbors who suspect they are Communist spies. As a child, she doesn’t understand, “Why are Cubans suddenly spoken of / as enemies? / Not so long ago, Mami’s island / was only known for music / and sugar.”

Enchanted Air offers a nuanced perspective on the conflict between the United States and Cuba that never loses sight of the personal, the perspective of a young girl seeking her voice and an understanding of who she is. Bullies terrify her; so does riding her first horse in Mexico, even though she has pestered her parents for years to let her ride a horse. When she skips grades in school because of her academic ability, she gets in over her head with a fast crowd of outcasts—the only classmates to accept her: “After I race away from that scary / first kiss, I have no hope for love, / or even like.” She is eleven at the time; the boy is 16.  Her older friends drop out of school one by one—pregnant, drug addicted, on public assistance.

Edel Rodriguez’s beautiful cover art evokes the early work of Pablo Picasso, a disembodied face fused with a bird in flight—an image of the magic within imagination. Air, wings, and flight figure prominently in many of the poems. When Margarita’s grandmother has to return to Cuba, she wishes she had “paper wings” to join her; the years before the revolution are dangerous times, with “vultures, too, circling / like a wheel / of darkly winged / questions.”

Young Margarita finds her place as a poet, a traveler of the world, and a keen observer of history, culture and her society’s many paradoxes. How does this child of a Cuban mother end up with a well-used passport, a “disturbing document / that specifically states / it cannot be used for travel / to Cuba”? As in her many historical and biographical works, Engle’s poetry in this memoir resonates with language that is beautiful, fresh, and emotionally true. The back matter, while not comprehensive, offers valuable context for the poems. The final page excerpts José Martí’s Versos Sencillos in Spanish and English, showing Engle as a literary heir of this great Cuban poet.

Enchanted Air has won a number of accolades, including the 2016 Pura Belpré Award, the 2016 Walter Dean Myers Honor Award, and it was a Finalist for the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award. All of these are well deserved and Enchanted Air is highly recommended for both middle grade and young adult readers.

—Lyn Miller-Lachmann
(published 1/20/16)

This review, in a slightly different form, first appeared in The Pirate Tree (thepiratetree.com). We thank The Pirate Tree for permission.

Zulema and the Witch Owl / Zulema y la Bruja Lechuza

author: Xavier Garza 

translator: Carolina Villarroel 

illustrator: Xavier Garza 

Piñata Publications, Arte Público Press, 2009 

grades 1-3

Mexican, Mexican American

All societies have ways of socializing and disciplining their children; in many cultures, parents and grandparents teach moral lessons with monster stories that scare children into behaving. The Mexican version is, “Portate bien o te lleva el Cucuy”—“Behave yourself or the Cucuy will steal you away.” Mexican and Mexican American kids living in the border towns love Cucuy stories, which are among the scariest.

Here, nine-year-old Zulema is a terror, “the meanest little girl in the whole wide world.” She is so mean that every kid in school is afraid of her. She is so mean that puppies and kittens run from her. She is so mean that she throws rocks at people who don’t buy her Girl Scout cookies. She is so mean that she carries around a slingshot and her little dolly is a luchador rudo. She is so mean that—OK, you get the picture.

Pues, Zulema’s mother has had it with this kid, to the point where she’s forced to call in the big guns—90-year-old Grandma Sabina is coming to live with them. Grandma is far from a pushover, and Zulema’s nasty, beyond disrespectful attitude doesn’t faze her. But when Zulema mocks Grandma’s appearance and scoffs at her warning about the Witch Owl’s coming to take away children who don’t mind their elders—that’s the last straw. It’s time to take action, the kind of totally scary action that will force Zulema to mend her ways. Instantly.

Villarroel’s Spanish is more than a translation; it flows with the same scary storytelling rhythm as the English. “Si no cambias de actitud,” Grandma warns, “la Bruja Lechuza vendrá a visitarte antes de lo que imaginas.”

Garza’s darkened palette of thickly brushed acrylic-on-paper art presents anime-like characters with huge eyes and over-the-top expressions that complement his eerie story. Full bleeds show three frightened children running from the Witch Owl; the terrified Zulema—as the gigantic Bruja Lechuza envelops her—helplessly screaming for help with no one to rescue her; and finally, the suddenly reformed little girl—holding a large white feather—recognizing who Grandma really is. Garza also incorporates little hints throughout—such as Grandma’s eyes, her owl-headed cane, and her wing-shaped rebozo—and my favorites: the dual-language dividers, in which Grandma actually transforms from image to image.

Between Garza’s storytelling and art, and Villarroel’s excellent translation, this is as close as youngsters—both hablantes and English readers—will get to being inside a story. Zulema and the Witch Owl / Zulema y la Bruja Lechuza is creepy and predictable—no subtlety here—and young readers will want to return to and share it over and over. It’s highly recommended.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 1/15/16)