Illegal

author: Bettina Restrepo

Kathryn Tegen Books / HarperCollins, 2011 

grades 7-up 

Mexican

The Cover

A teenage girl stands on dirt mixed with brambles, pieces of ragweed, and burned-out remnants of cypress roots. Nothing will ever grow where she stands. The girl faces away from the reader and away from her home. Her eyes are focused ahead, at tall buildings in what appears to be Houston, across the Mexican-US border. The blue sky on the “American” side frames her face and neck, and a breeze blows back her hair. She wears a white Mexican peasant blusa with embroidered trim, which reveals skin at her back and part of her face, offsetting her brown complexion and high cheekbones. Above her head, in large purple italics—with a barbed-wire design running across it—is the title: “Illegal.” This young person’s immigration status is all that defines her.

The CIP page lists the word “illegal,” and the phrases, “illegal immigrant” and “illegal aliens,” but not “undocumented.” The epigraph states (in caps): WE ARE ALL IMMIGRANTS. 

This is all a set-up for younger YA readers, documented and not.

People who cross without documents do not not refer to themselves as “illegal.” They use the term “indocumentado” (undocumented) or “sin papeles” (without papers). In truth, ¡Ningún ser humano es ilegal!—To be human is never illegal.

The Story

In this first-person narrative, 14-year-old Nora and her mother, searching for Nora’s father, make the harrowing journey from their small Mexican town of Cedula, to Houston, Texas. He had left three years before, seeking work to support his small impoverished family.

In attempting to describe the difficulties faced by undocumented young people, Restrepo exploits the story with stereotypical shortcuts. Everything that could possibly be wrong is wrong—from faulty Spanish (including Espanglish and code-switching) to inappropriate Black English to thoughtless cultural symbolism to common tropes about Mexican people to statements of misplaced ideological positions in characters’ mouths—it’s all problematic, to say the least. 

Faulty character development aside, Illegal is culturally, factually and historically illogical.

The Narration and Dialogue

According to Daniel José Older, “The function of language is to communicate things clearly. The function of grammar and rules around language are to facilitate that communication.” (1)

Both Nora’s narration and her dialogue, which are assumed to be in Spanish, are presented in English with a few Spanish words tossed in. Sometimes the italicized Spanish follows the English as a translation, and sometimes a few italicized Spanish words or phrases are tossed into an otherwise English narration.

When she’s speaking to the reader—or when she’s communicating with Spanish-speaking characters—Nora’s narration and dialogue are presented in faultless grammatical English. But when she’s attempting to communicate with an English-speaker, Nora struggles for words and speaks in broken English. (2) For instance, when Nora tries to explain to her friend, Keisha, why she can’t go to school, she says, “I need to English.” This is immediately followed by Nora’s telling the reader, “If I was smarter and spoke better, it would help me.” And “I school. No money. Papers” is a culturally incoherent word salad.

Had the author written the narration in the third person, the story would have been easier for the reader to understand. But because the author chose to narrate the story in the first person, there’s a jarring contrast between the grammatical English she uses to communicate with the reader and the broken English she uses in dialogues. This broken English doesn’t reflect the actual rhythms and syntax in Spanish that one would expect to find in someone who is struggling with English. 

Poor self-image aside for now, if Nora were narrating in English while processing in Spanish—as she certainly would be—it’s without question that her grammatical English in the narration would have contained Spanish metaphors and a comfortable Spanish rhythm. And her English in the dialogue would have followed her Spanish thought patterns. So, rather than “I need to English,” she would have said, “I need English” (“Necesito inglés”) or “I need the English” (“Necesito el inglés”). This technique would have served to connect the reader to Nora’s thoughts rather than having them try to figure out what’s going on. But rather than facilitating the communication, the author chose to craft the narration and internal discourse in a way that turns out to be super-awkward and can be confusing to the reader.

Money and the Crossing

Nora receives a “stack of money” that her father has wired to the family. Eight weeks later, the money is gone—the family is broke—and Nora worries how they will pay for groceries or the taxes. The family has old bills to pay and cannot get any more credit at the grocery store. Everyone is in a panic, and they scream at each other. (Note: In reality, a 14-year-old Mexican girl would not be whiny and argumentative, and would certainly not scream at her grandmother. Rather, she would be deferential to the rest of her family.)

Later, Nora looks inside the “money jar”—“We had enough to buy our way across the border, but then what?” Turns out, it’s a “stack of money”—a “stack of pesos.” Nora tells Grandma that “Mama went into town to buy bus tickets to the border.” We don’t know if she exchanged the pesos for dollars. The two take a bus to Matamoras, and Mama takes the address of the coyote out of her purse. “I guess we should find a taxi,” she says. The two meet the coyote, who demands “two thousand each,” and Nora bargains for “fifteen hundred (for both, it’s assumed). Nothing else.” The coyote grabs the money and mother and daughter climb inside the fruit truck that will take them across the border. 

There is no context for the family’s grinding poverty. (3) That they have barely enough money to survive, then they don’t, then they find enough in the “money jar” to buy their way across the border is confusing and inconsistent with reality. We don’t know if this money is in pesos or dollars. Either way, it’s far from enough. Coyotes—human smugglers—accept only US dollars and they don’t stand around and bargain because they don’t have to. Coyotes often charge thousands for the trip across the Mexican-US border; it would take $2,000-$3,000 just to get their attention. And a fourteen-year-old girl—or anyone else—would not dare to attempt to negotiate with a coyote anyway. They’re connected with the cartels. And there is no way that a coyote’s address would be written down.

That a destitute farm family turns out to have enough saved in their “money jar” to pay bus fare and a coyote and support themselves until they find work, and have money to send home—strains the reader’s suspension of disbelief. Families who can’t afford to pay a coyote look for other ways of crossing the border—risking life and limb by riding atop La Bestia, the Mexican death trains; risking drowning by trying to navigate the treacherous Río Grande using old tires; or risking dehydration and death by walking hundreds of miles through the arid desert.

Further, once they get across, Mexican families do not have to struggle to survive gang violence, do not have to struggle to exist in a filthy room or apartment, and do not have to struggle to find work that is, for the most part, nonexistent. That they do is a common trope. Rather, there are internal social networks in the community that outsiders do not know about. An undocumented family showing up in Houston would immediately be taken in by an underground network of people who would be on the lookout for them. There are jobs ready and a place to stay. The family would be taken care of. 

In Illegal, however, there are pretty much only horrors and the gangs, and filth and poverty. In her search for her father, Nora deals with anger, desperation and loss of faith. She stands up to a brutal coyote, fights off an attempted gang rape, confronts the “mean girls,” obtains food and shelter for her mother and herself, gets a job for herself and obtains fake work papers for her mother, and makes some friends who have issues of their own. Her dreams include learning English, going to school, and owning a pair of shoes that fit her. As she passes her fifteenth birthday, she pines, “I want to live in a place that doesn’t smell like garbage. I want my quinceañera. I want to be fifteen again.”

Throughout, Nora and all of the undocumented people she encounters refer to themselves as “illegals,” and in discovering that her father has been killed in a construction accident, she is told this:

Several of the men who stayed in the area saw the accident. They think the company dumped him by the work hall…. The company worried the construction site would be shut down because of the illegals. All of the other men left the site because they were afraid. The owner threatened that he would turn them in to immigration.

A year later, there’s a surprise party for Nora: not a belated quinceañera to honor her as a Mexican woman, but a “sweet sixteen party for my American girl,” her mother says. The family is together in Houston, Nora is becoming more fluent in English, she and her mother are working, Grandma has moved in with them, and they have “the cleanest alley on Quitman Street.” In the epilogue, Nora says,“I hope we can buy a real tombstone for Papa one day. I spend less of my time thinking about Cedula, and more on my homework.”

If there are any issues in Illegal, they are personal rather than political, and, in the end, all is neatly resolved. Like a long-running telenovela at the end of the series. 

Illegal is dripping with incongruous similes and metaphors (“Mama melted stomach first into a box of mangoes”), internal contradictions, and cultural inconsistencies and anomalies. It also contains descriptions of self-loathing (“I could just keep on being a stupid fruit picker and never think again”), problematic depictions of race, and disability tropes and fat-shaming. A few examples are below.

In this time of physical, social and political attacks on immigrants, migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, this bears repeating: ¡Ningún ser humano es ilegal!—To be human is never illegal. Restrepo’s book is not recommended.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 3/30/19)

Muchísimas gracias a David Bowles, María Cárdenas, Lyn Miller-Lachmann, Guadalupe García McCall, and Noam Szoke. 

~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~

PROBLEMATIC DEPICTIONS OF RACE 

African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) is a recognized group of dialects of standard English, with regional grammatical patterns and general rules and meanings. It’s clear that Restrepo does not know AAVE. She just doesn’t get it right. Keisha’s “Black” speech is not only inappropriate—it’s a sloppy mess. Both her dialect and rhythm change within the same thought. 

• Keisha’s shoulders slumped. “I’ve been telling everyone about you. Like hows we been good friends to each other, even though you a Mexican and all.”

• “I once ran around the neighborhood and my momma switched me so bad. I learned my lesson. I stay at the pool or the library.” She paused. “And now that you’ve pissed them off, ain’t no way we going running around.”

This, from Flora to Nora:

• “I don’t swim with Negros. Go play with your little friend.” Flora mouthed the word “nigger” at Keisha. “I know what she’s saying.” Keisha looked hurt but raised her chin. “You ain’t like that, right?…. You ain’t gonna be friends with her, right?”

And this (from Keisha), while not actually about welfare, is reminiscent of Reagan’s “Welfare Queen” trope:

• “Don’t worry, my mama don’t like charity either. But she says if the government is giving it out like candy, you might as well use some of it. She knows how all of this works.”

Other racist tropes include these, from Nora:

• The blond girl sitting high up in the chair looked like an angel. Highlights in her hair twinkled like it had a lightbulb glowing through it.

• Keisha’s skin intrigued me, because I didn’t know much about black people. Most people I knew were different shades of brown. Some like tea, others like coffee with milk. Never black. I hoped to touch her hair one day.

DISABILITY TROPES AND FAT-SHAMING

• “Are you okay?” Keisha asked me. “Do you even know what I’m saying?” She said it louder, like I was deaf. “She doesn’t speak English, dummy,” Flora said to Keisha.

• “But the still, humid air of Houston sat on me like a gordita waiting for the buffet.”

CULTURAL INCONSISTENCIES / ANOMALIES

• “You can’t let (grapefruit) decay on the branch. Bad karma,” lectured Grandma inside our concrete house. 

(Note: Nora’s Mexican family is Catholic. Karma is central to Hindu and Buddhist belief. Grandma would more likely have told Nora that letting grapefruit decay on the branch is “mala suerte.”)

• “I punted the grapefruit like a fútbol and ruby red juice sprayed into the air like droplets of sangre.” 

(Note: Fútbol is soccer, not “football.” Punting is a play in football, not “fútbol.” And the juice of a red grapefruit is pink, not red.)

• “When I passed by the door of the old church, I took a rock and threw it against the old wooden door…. I spit on the steps of the church and walked home.” 

(Note: Unless she had been raped by a priest, no matter how angry she was, a Mexican Catholic girl would not desecrate—or even disrespect—a church. This behavior is more like what a whiny white girl would do.)

FAULTY SPANISH TRANSLATIONS IN TEXT AND GLOSSARY

• “¡Bollios, ten para un dollar! He mixed English and Spanish. I understood the Spanglish.” 

(Note: It’s not Spanglish. It’s code-switching. (4)  And it’s the wrong preposition: should be por, not para.)

• gordita—fat lady (slang) 

(Note: “Gordita” is an endearing term for one’s chubby daughter or granddaughter. And it’s also the name for a small, thick corn tortilla stuffed with cheese, meat or other fillings. The Spanish word for “fat lady” is “gorda.”)

• Hola, mami.—Hey, sweet lady. 

(Note: “Hola, mami” means “hi, mom.” This is sometimes called out on the streets to someone who is not the person’s mother. “Hey, sweet lady” may be implied, but that’s not its meaning.)

• Que onda guero—a reference to a song by Beck, meaning “What’s up, dude?” (slang) 

(Note: In addition to the missing interrogatories and accents, “¿Qué onda, güero?” is a chapter heading that references a popular Tejano song. It does not mean, “What’s up, dude?” It means “What’s up, whitey?” or “What’s up, blondie?” or “What’s up, gringo?” The Spanish for “What’s up, dude?” is “¿Qué onda, güey?”)

FIESTA MART

Restrepo acknowledges her agent and editor and family and friends and colleagues and organizations. Then, there’s this: “And to the employees, families, and customers of Fiesta Mart—thank you for sharing your lives and stories. I am humbled.” 

Her bio reads: “She worked as an internal auditor in the Hispanic supermarket Fiesta Mart, which is portrayed in this book. There she examined firsthand the challenges in the nuances of life for illegal immigrants.”

Her dedication reads: “For Manuela and Mimi—and the roots you have given me.” If Manuela and Mimi worked at Fiesta Mart, the author’s research was probably not about root vegetables. 

~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~

(1) “Why We Don’t Italicize Spanish,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24gCI3Ur7FM

(2) What’s commonly referred to as “broken English” is the use of English words and phrases filtered through the thought processes of a fluent speaker of another language.

(3) Due to US economic policies (specifically NAFTA) and the Mexican government’s complicity, the US diversion of water from the Río Bravo has led to one of the greatest droughts in history. Suffering Mexican farm families have insufficient water and many have had to abandon their farms and come to El Norte. It’s a matter of survival.

(4) The author, through Nora, confuses Spanglish (Espanglish) for code-switching. Espanglish is the use of English-Spanish hybrid words, such as “restarán” (restaurant) or “washatería” (laundromat) or “Nuyorican” (Puerto Rican New Yorker). Code-switching is the combination of words or phrases from two different languages in a thought or sentence, such as “Hágame un favor y clean your room.”

Vincent Ventura and the Mystery of the Chupacabras / Vincent Ventura y el misterio del chupacabras

author: Xavier Garza

Piñata Books / Arte Público Press, 2018 

grades 3-6 

Mexican American

Lots of kids like scary stories, and the first volume in Xavier Garza’s bilingual series published by Texas-based Arte Público/Piñata Books, Vincent Ventura and the Mystery of the Chupacabras / Vincent Ventura y el misterio del chupacabras is sure to delight and satisfy middle grade fans of the horror genre. Vincent and his two best friends, Michelle and Bobby, notice strange things happening next door at 666 Duende Street after Mr. Calaveras moves in. For one thing, dogs are disappearing. Inside a foul-smelling drainage tunnel, Vincent finds Chato, a neighbor’s celebrity chihuahua, dead and its blood drained. This is not the work of a vampire but a chupacabras, a beast that sucks blood, known to inhabit both Mexico and Puerto Rico. Could Mr. Calaveras be transforming into the notorious chupacabras?

Against the advice of his friends, Vincent disguises himself and goes to Mr. Calaveras’s house to spy on him. The gruff neighbor sniffs out the ruse, and now Vincent is in danger. And so is his adorable beagle Kenny, who disappears soon after. Although the chupacabras is only supposed to kill non-human animals, there’s evidence that Mr. Calaveras, who was himself bitten on a university research trip to Puerto Rico, has killed humans in the past and will do it again.

Garza, who has authored middle grade tales of contemporary humor and horror, strikes a good balance of safe and scary for readers ages eight to 12. Yes, a dog dies, but not one to which the readers are attached. In fact, Chato the chihuahua’s celebrity status makes it a source of humor as much as horror. Garza’s vivid descriptions capture the sensory experience of entering the chupacabras’s lair. The author’s cartoon-like illustrations, one per chapter, juxtapose the ordinary-looking protagonist and his friends with the exaggeratedly fearsome beast of lore. Readers will learn basic facts about chupacabras without those facts slowing down a well-paced story. And all’s well that ends well, except that Mr. Calaveras has disappeared without a trace and 666 Duende Street has been fixed up to await its new tenant. Who will bring the next disaster to the neighborhood?

This bilingual flip book contains a smooth Spanish translation by Gabriela Baeza Ventura that hews closely to the English original. Along with the short chapters and illustrations, the English and Spanish versions in the same book make this an especially good choice for young readers who are learning the other language.

An interesting bit of trivia is that Garza’s own son is named Vincent, and he wrote the series as a gift to his son. And now to all of us. *Highly recommended for all home, library and classroom collections, and to fans of light horror and those dipping into the genre for the first time.

—Lyn Miller-Lachmann

(published 3/20/19)

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

An earlier version of this review first appeared in The Pirate Tree (thepiratetree.com). We thank The Pirate Tree for permission.

My Shoes and I: Crossing Three Borders / Mis Zapatos y Yo: Cruzando Tres Fronteras

author: René Colato Laínez 

translator: René Colato Laínez

illustrator: Fabricio Vanden Broeck

Piñata Books / Arte Público Press, 2010, 2019 

kindergarten-grade 3 

Salvadoran 

My Shoes and I: Crossing Three Frontiers / Mis Zapatos y Yo: Cruzando Tres Fronteras was originally published in English by Boyds Mills Press in 2010. With English text modified and simplified, and Spanish added for this edition, the story is based on Colato Laínez’ own arduous 1,000-mile journey, traveling with his father from El Salvador through Guatemala and Mexico to the US. Together, the boy and his father walk across valleys, climb up mountains, take a two-day bus ride to Mexico City; sleep in an old, dark trailer for a few days—and, finally, swim across the Rio Grande and walk to the border—to reunite with Mamá, who is waiting for them on the other side.

In Colato Laínez’s gentle, reassuring story for the youngest readers, a pair of new shoes that Mamá had sent young René remains the literal and visual focus of the journey. The shoes are symbolic of the long, dangerous struggles without actually telling or showing any real danger. As René’s shoes, depicted on just about every page, travel with child and father, they deteriorate: they become scuffed and dirty, they develop holes, they overflow with mud, they fill with pebbles, they get soaked in the river. But throughout, the shoes are with him: “Uno, dos, tres…” they still walk everywhere he walks. And finally, father and son “cross the finish line, together.” 

In contrast to the author’s actual situation, the family here are immigrants rather than refugees. This is an important distinction. In the 1980s, thousands of Salvadorans fled here to escape the 12 years of violence in which right-wing government forces, supported by the US, murdered more than 75,000 civilians.

Although times were dangerous then and they remain so today, both story and illustrations erase the horrors and the historical differences between the author’s experiences in the 1980s and those of Central American refugees today. For instance, refugees from Central America are desperately fleeing organized gang violence; whole families often travel in caravans for safety. And, of course, the political climate on the US side is terrifying as well. 

But in father and son’s travel from El Salvador all the way to the US, there’s no political content then or now; neither running from war nor running from gangs. Except for some difficulty—inclement weather, dogs’ stealing their lunch, Papá losing his wallet and the two having to stay in an old dark trailer for several days —there’s just “uno, dos, tres,” counting the steps and finally “crossing the finish line.” 

(In his author’s note, Colato Laínez writes that, after his father lost his wallet, an old trailer in Mexico City became their home for two months, while his father had to find work to “get money for us to eat” and his mother saved more money for their trip. This is a common situation among people who are crossing, and would have been an important part of the story.) 

Vanden Broeck’s bright, heavily saturated paintings on weathered wood-grain backgrounds center the shoes from varying angles. In some scenes, the illustrations belie the text. In the next-to-last spread, for example, René’s shoes are in the water, and he is looking directly at both of them. But the text reads, “I see a shoelace. I grab it. A shoe comes out of the water. I don’t see the other one. I come out of the water. Papá and I look around. Trapped in some branches is my other shoe.” And in the last spread, René and Papá reunite with Mamá at the shore—and they appear completely clean and dry.

It’s possible that whatever text was revised in this newer version of the story did not follow the art, or vice versa. 

As a story of an immigrant or refugee family reuniting in the US, the story leaves a lot of questions: If Papá and young René are undocumented (as he writes in his author’s note), how is it they are traveling alone? If they are documented, why are they mostly on foot rather than taking available transportation? What’s the status of Mamá, who is already on the other side? 

My Shoes and I: Crossing Three Borders / Mis Zapatos y Yo: Cruzando Tres Fronteras oversimplifies the horrors that refugees from Central America face as they pass from El Salvador all the way to the US. It’s a pretty safe book for younger readers who don’t have the family experience of being refugees and, as such, it’s recommended. If used in the classroom or library, I’d strongly recommend My Shoes and I: Crossing Three Borders / Mis Zapatos y Yo: Cruzando Tres Fronteras be read in conjunction with Jairo Buitrago’s and Rafael Yockteng’s excellent Dos Conejos Blancos // Two White Rabbits (Groundwood, 2016).

—Beverly Slapin

(published 2/24/19)

Un Nuevo Hogar // A New Home

author: Tania de Regil 

illustrator: Tania de Regil

Candlewick, 2019 

preschool-up 

Mexican 

In much of the world, moving from place to place is a common experience. For children, it can be strange and exciting: there may be “new” things to see and do, “new” people to meet, “new” cultures to encounter, “new” languages to learn,“new” foods to taste. For some, it’s a world of wonder and imagination.

Told in a single narrative accompanied by complementary illustrations of a young boy who is moving with his family from New York to Mexico City and a young girl who is moving with her family from Mexico City to New York, Un Nuevo Hogar and A New Home are a straightforward and gentle discussion of what it may be like for a child to relocate and acclimate to a strange place. 

De Regil’s artwork, rendered in ink, colored pencil, watercolor and gouache, feature different palettes—mostly blues, grays, and yellows for New York City, and browns, reds and greens for Mexico City—that lend complexity and merit to the simplicity of a well-told story. As well, in the airport scene, where both the boy and the girl and their parents (he is holding a teddy bear and she is holding a Mexican peasant doll) briefly encounter each other, it’s refreshing to see the natural interaction among people of differing ethnicities and skin tones.

Each spread holds both similarities and differences for young children to observe and ponder. In one spread, for instance, the streets in both cities feature musicians, tail-wagging dogs, and taxis. Both moms wear ponytails and both grandmas wear eyeglasses. The girl waves to one musician and the boy smiles at another; the boy waves to a snack vendor and the girl smiles at another. As well, observant younger people will notice challenging issues in both cities—such as poverty and homelessness—with empathy: “Sé que mi ciudad puede ser difícil para algunos.” (“I know that my city can be difficult for some.”) While their moms look on approvingly, the boy pets a destitute man’s dog and the girl gives a coin to an elderly woman on the street.

© 2019 by Tania de Regil. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA.

This combination of straightforward and empathetic language and appealing art demonstrates the similarities of children’s relocation without the trauma of being stereotyped and used as a political ploy. For instance, a spread showing an illustration of the boy looking through his apartment window in New York and the girl looking out from her balcony in Mexico City expresses the same trepidation about moving: “(Pero no sé si quiere irme, porque voy / a extrañar muchas cosas de mi hogar.” (“But I don’t know if I want to leave, because I’m going / to miss a lot of things from my home.”) And another spread reads: “Y también voy a extrañar / jugar con mis amigos.” (“And I will also miss / playing with my friends.”)

On one spread, for instance, the two children are thinking about some of the things they will miss on their way to school in the morning: listening to the street musicians playing their favorite music; and on their way home in the afternoon, stopping to get a delicious snack from a street vendor. 

However, adults who present this little book as a “travelogue” will be missing the point and losing an opportunity. For older readers, there’s a helpful section of thumbnail illustrations and text that provides historical and cultural information about the peoples and places encountered by our young newcomers—as well as a brief, accurate and age-appropriate discussion of poverty and its causes in both cities. 

Since this lovely little book portrays the newness of relocating through the eyes of two young people with the same initial worries, I would like to have seen it as a bilingual flip book. Maybe next printing. 

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

[Note: Un Nuevo Hogar and A New Home represent only one of millions of stories about immigration and relocation and should not be read as the immigrant story. For these two middle-class families, air travel from Mexico to New York and from New York to Mexico—and relocation from one country to another—go without difficulty, as such events should for everyone. But in these harsh and punitive times, their experiences are not typical for those desperate immigrants, migrants, and asylum-seekers from Mexico and Central America who attempt to cross the US-Mexico border and establish new roots here.]

—Beverly Slapin

(published 1/30/19)

Luca's Bridge / El puente de Luca

author: Mariana Llanos
illustrator: Anna López Real
Penny Candy Books, 2019
kindergarten-up
Mexican

In these harsh economic and political times, there are as many immigrant stories as there are families who immigrate, migrate, or seek asylum. Luca’s Bridge / El puente de Luca is an engaging story of a Mexican family’s trying to make the best of a terrible situation. Mami and Papi, who are not documented, are being deported, and their children, brothers Luca and Paco, are US citizens. They have the “choice” of staying on this side of the border—with their school, their friends, and everything they know—but without their parents; or accompanying their parents to a place they don’t know. The family decides, of course, to stay together.

It appears that Llanos wrote this story in one language and then in the other. Young hablantes see a Spanish version that is at least as authentic and beautiful as the English, a poetic interpretation rather than a translation, with much symbolism and metaphor. For instance, Llanos interprets the English beginning: “Sometimes the only way to go back home is to fly…” as “Hay veces en que volar es la única forma de volver…” In this case, there’s a word play in the Spanish between “volar” and “volver,” and the sentence literally translates as, “There are times when flying is the only way to get back.” And in Luca’s Bridge, Luca is, indeed, a migrant, flying home in his dreams, accompanied by the migratory Wilson’s warblers on just about every page. 

As he looks out the window, Luca imagines himself flying with the flock: —¿Estarán yendo a casa?—he asks himself. Are they going home? 

And, asleep, Lucas dreams he is napping on the moon, flying back home on a bridge of papel picado, playing his trumpet and leading a marching band, and laughing, laughing, laughing. 

Luca’s Bridge is a story of hard choices that should not be necessary: to break up your family so that your children might have a better, maybe safer, future without you; or stay together and live in uncertainly and quite possibly, poverty. As Luca plays his trumpet, “(His family’s) eyes sparkled. And for a moment, their sadness seemed to fly away through the open window.” / “los ojos les brillaban, y por ese momento, su tristeza salió por la ventana.” In their imaginations, they’re together, with each other, with the migratory warblers, at home in two places. 

López Real’s artwork, using graphite and colored pencil on acid-free paper, visually interprets and complements Llanos’s timely and bittersweet story while focusing on a subdued palette of mostly charcoal grays and blues with bright highlights in yellows and golds. As the family approaches the bridge they must cross to get to Mexico, readers see a forbidding gray fence and a formation of gray clouds above—“Everything had turned gray and scary, even the guards.” 

In almost every illustration, observant readers encounter bright images of yellow-and-black Wilson’s warblers—sometimes tiny and sometimes large, sometimes in a flock and sometimes alone, and sometimes reflected as wings on Luca’s trumpet or in the design of several beautiful papel picado. There’s even one perched on the back of a chair, right near family photos on a wall. These birds are migrants without borders—their habitats ranging with the seasons all the way from Alaska to northern South America—and their presence here will especially resonate with young people whose families also move back and forth. 

As well, young readers will notice the subliminal messages carried in López Real’s colorful spot images. On one page, for instance, there’s a patch of wildflowers growing just outside the window of Abuela’s little house. A sad, pensive Luca is leaning out the window while a tiny warbler perches on the sill, keeping him company and possibly offering consolation. 

There’s so much more to tug at the heart. At supper, for instance, Abuela mentions a dicho—“Donde come uno, comen dos” (“Where one eats, two eat”)—and then has to translate it for Luca and Paco, who don’t speak Spanish. 

Without didacticism, without polemic, Llanos’ and López Real’s intent in Luca’s Bridge / El puente de Luca is to spark discussion among the youngest children about what it might be like to experience immigration and deportation, and that sometimes—only sometimes—there might be hope in what appears to be hopeless situations. 

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

[Note to educators: If there are young immigrant or migrant children in your classroom, please use caution. Some young children may not be free to talk about their lives, their families, their experiences or their countries of origin.]

—Beverly Slapin
(published 1/30/19)

Conversation with Mariana Llanos and Anna López Real

Beverly Slapin: In her TED Talk, “The Danger of a Single Story,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie cautioned against the misunderstanding of others, and specifically, how decades of misrepresenting and stereotyping “the other” have dominated mainstream Western society. I was reminded of her presentation when I read your awesome children’s book, Luca’s Bridge / El puente de Luca, which I described as “an engaging story of a Mexican family’s trying to make the best of a terrible situation.”

Indeed, in these harsh economic and political times, there are as many different “immigrant stories” as there are immigrants, migrants, refugees, and people seeking asylum. Many, if not most, of these stories are about hard choices. Some end well and others don’t. Yet, children’s books about immigration, more often than not, tell a single story. 

What were your visions in the writing and illustration of Luca’s story? Was there something in your own lives that contributed to the telling in this way? 

Mariana, did you think about the problems involved in telling a “single story” or did this story grow on its own? Ana, what were your thoughts as you envisioned the illustrations?

Mariana Llanos: In my case, my immigrant experience, and also the fact that I have children who are born American citizens, were the reasons I wrote this story. I think all immigrants who have to go through the “legalization” process can relate to this kind of experience, the pressures and uncertainty: What if I don’t get a green card? What if they deny my application? What if? What if not? So this is what I am exploring in the story. In the case of Luca and his family, they are what is called a “mixed-status” family: Luca and Paco are US citizens while their parents are undocumented. There are many types of mixed-status families, where some family members are legal residents, others are naturalized citizens, others are American-born citizens, and others are undocumented. 

Anna López Real: I’m Mexican. I have lived in Mexico all my life, so I’m not an immigrant. But I know lots of people from my generation who are immigrants themselves, people I went to school with, some are legal residents and some are undocumented, but their children are growing up as American citizens. The families don’t have the freedom to come and go. I have a friend whose relative had died, and she couldn’t return to Mexico for the funeral because if she had, she was afraid that she would not have been permitted to come back to the US. I was reminded of all these stories and I also think that we have almost always been in motion in one way or another, and almost all people who come from somewhere else travel through Mexico, even people from as far away as Africa. Many of us who are not native were not born in a place we may now call “home.”

BS: Mariana, why did you decide to portray Luca’s family as mixed-status? I don’t think I’ve seen any other children’s story as having a mixed-status family.

ML: The story grew on its own. I did not set out to write a story about a mixed-status family. I started with a feeling, an idea. A car that felt sad and heavy. A family inside, their belongings packed. A child waving goodbye through the back seat window. I knew they were sad, but why? And where were they going? That is when I started finding pieces of their story and stringing them together. This is a story not often told, as you well mention, but it is very common among immigrant communities.

BS: Mariana, why does Luca not speak or understand any Spanish? Is there an unspoken backstory that you’d like readers to know or figure out? 

ML: I thought about Luca as being like my own children: they understand Spanish, but aren’t fluent when speaking. Sometimes, if a Spanish-speaking person speaks too fast or has an accent, my children have a hard time understanding. My middle child told me before we went to spend a month in Peru: “But I can't speak Spanish!” Even though he understands it, he doesn’t feel at ease with the language, perhaps just like Luca. Not all children of Spanish-speaking immigrants are fluent in their parents’ language. I wanted to walk away from what feels typical in a Latino family. Yes, this is a Latino child for whom Spanish is not his first language. I promote bilingualism, at home and at schools, but I understand becoming bilingual isn’t always an easy process. 

When I was researching for this story, I found some interesting material about American citizen children who lived in Mexico with their deported parents. They related how at school they were mocked for their accents. Some spoke in Spanish, but it wasn’t the same as being native Spanish-speakers. So in telling Luca’s story, I decided to add another layer: Lucas is worried about how he’s going to communicate and make friends. What is more problematic to a child than that?

BS: Mariana, both the Spanish and English are heartfelt and beautiful, and neither appears to be a direct translation of the other. That way, both hablantes and English readers can read whichever version they choose, and bilingual readers can read both and possibly note their differences. Did you write the Spanish first and translate it into English or write the English first or write them separately? What was your plan or did both the languages grow organically with the story?

ML: Although I was born and raised in Lima, Peru, I usually write picture book stories in English and poetry in Spanish. That is the way my bilingual brain works. But it wasn’t always like this. I have been a writer since I was a child, but when I moved to the United States I stopped writing. There was so much I had to deal with: a new country, a new language, a new culture. I became a mother, away from my family. I was on survival mode. When my second child was around three, I had an existential moment. I asked myself: “Who am I?” and “Who do I want to be?” And I remembered how much I enjoyed writing and how I had dreamed of writing a story. I tried to write, only to find the page in front of me always remained blank. I could not utter a sentence, much less tell a story. One day, a phrase came to my head—in English. The story seemed to unfold on its own and it was finished in a few hours. All in English. It was the way my brain had found to go around that big knot that was blocking my writing. And I embraced it. To this day, I write in English. Poetry comes at me in Spanish, it flows much easier, but it took some time for this process to happen, too.

So when I envisioned Luca’s Bridge as a story in Spanish and English, I threw my bilingual superpower into gear by imagining that I was writing poetry. 

BS: Anna, very often, the publisher separates the author from the artist in order, they say, to allow them their own visions. How did you come to work on this project? I’m especially impressed by how your illustrations beautifully complement the story; and also, how your limited use of color (mostly grays and golds with some blues and greens) moves the emotions of Luca and his family. What was your artistic vision behind the story? 

ALR: As I thought about and started working on the illustrations, I wanted to emphasize the emotional journey that Luca and his family were going through—their sadness, the loss of their home, the loss of their friends—but also how the power of love and family and the joy of doing what he loves could help lessen Luca’s ordeal. I tried to convey all of this with the color palette, with the grays and the blues representing the sadness and the darkness of his parents’ facing deportation, and then the yellows to signify the hope and the magic that is within him and in his family’s love. So even though Mariana and I did not work together, she had made the story so rich that I had a lot to work with. 

BS: Anna, I’m also impressed with the symbolism, especially the role of the migratory warblers who appear everywhere, even in the most unexpected places, such as the papel picado, on a windowsill, in Luca’s dream, perching on a chair or on a windowsill… Can you say more about why you chose to portray this little bird who knows no boundaries as a representative of this story?

ALR: Thank you for noticing that, Beverly. Luca imagines himself flying with a flock of birds, and I thought that it was just perfect that Mariana added that. When I read that I felt that Luca wanted himself and his family to be free like those birds, so those yellow warblers—who are migratory birds, free to come and go across the continent—became a symbol of freedom, companions to Luca in all of his journey and also a contrast to his family's situation. I added other bits of visual symbolism throughout the story as well: the ominous wall, the wilting flowers, because these symbols can be understood by everyone.

I also wanted to insert part of my own Mexican culture to the story without it’s being a cliché: the bridge is a combination of the patterns in Tenango embroidery from the state of Hidalgo; and Talavera, a traditional pottery painting from Puebla. I chose embroidery because, as we are humans, there is a thread that connects us all, there is more that brings us together than what separates us from each other, and the Talavera pottery because I associated it with being home and cooking. That’s why I added the birds in that form in the image of the bridge.

BS: Mariana and Anna, Luca’s Bridge is not only a well-told and beautifully illustrated story—it rings true to the tough decisions many families, especially mixed-status families, have to make.

ML: I’m grateful that there is a space for stories that can be uncomfortable but reflect the world in all its shades and colors. Luca’s Bridge describes a difficult theme, but it is also full of hope and love. Luca and his family find laughter and we see happiness and solace can sometimes be found even in situations that may be seen as hopeless. I think all of us, not only immigrants, can relate to this.

ALR: I just hope that when children and adults read this story, they get a sense of how difficult most immigrant experiences are. My hope is that this story helps children become more empathetic. In Mexico and everywhere else, we need more compassion and empathy for those whom we see as being different from us.

BS: Mariana y Anna, ¡Muchas felicidades y míl gracias for this beautiful story!

ML: ¡Y gracias a ti también!

ALR: ¡Míl gracias, Beverly y Mariana!

(published 9/28/19)