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)

Soñadores // Dreamers

author: Yuyi Morales

illustrator: Yuyi Morales

translator (Spanish): Teresa Mlawer. 

Neal Porter Books / Holiday House, 2018 

preschool-up 

Mexican

On the cover, facing front, is a young Brown mama, in a white Mexican blusa with blue embroidered trim. With both hands holding her baby safely up against her body, this mama looks straight ahead. Her eyebrows are slightly raised and she is not smiling. Her expression is concerned and questioning, maybe a little fearful. 

The book’s spine bisects mama’s face and body. To her right and the cover’s left—on a bright background of embroidered Mexican flowers in blues, reds, pinks and yellows—is the south, the land she is leaving. On her left and the cover’s right, two flowers peek out from behind her. She and her baby are traveling north, to a place unknown.

Safe in the arms of his mama, a diapered Brown baby—slightly lighter-complected than his mama—is smiling and looking northward. With one tiny hand on his mama’s sleeve, his eyebrows slightly raised, he is secure and curious. This baby’s eyes are focused on the book’s greenish and cottony-soft title. He is a soñadorcito, a little dreamer, open to all the new things around him. Above him a swallow flies into the clouds; and almost below him a monarch butterfly alights on a flower to take in the energy-rich nectar that will sustain its long journey. Guided by the swallow and the butterfly, the mama and her baby—and their dreams—are headed north.

And behind them all shine the rays of a bright sun.

In 1994, Yuyi and her two-month-old baby journeyed from their home town of Xalapa to San Francisco. Soñadores // Dreamers is Yuyi’s story of how and why they came here (“migrantes, tú y yo”) and how the magical place they eventually found—the San Francisco Public Library—changed their lives. Yuyi has told this, her “immigrant” story, many times to many different audiences. She was a shy young mother then, coming to a place where she did not understand the foreign language—English. Where (“cometimos muchos errores”) she did not know that a public fountain was not a place for her son to bathe and play (“¡Ay!”). And where she and her baby became caminantes, walking all over the city. This shy young mother eventually discovered “un lugar que nunca antes habíamos visto”—the glorious public library, a place (“Misterioso. Fantástico. Increíble. Sorprendente.”) that held thousands of books, a place in which kind strangers allowed her and her baby to stay all day, and—with something called a “library card”—even take home as many books as she could carry! For free!

It’s here, as she says and writes, that “Los libros se convirtieron / en nuestra lengua. / Los libros se convirtieron / en nuestro hogar. / Los libros se convirtieron / en nuestro vida. / Y tú y yo / aprendimos / a leer, / a hablar, / a escribir, / y / a hacer / oír nuestras voces.” (“Books became our language. / Books became our home. / Books became our lives. / We learned to read, / to speak, / to write, / and / to make / our voices heard.”)

As she checked out what must have been thousands of books, Yuyi taught herself how to make books: how to paint with various media, create handmade paper out of scraps, and bind books with string. As a stranger in a strange land, learning to transform paper and ink and scraps and string into storybooks, she began to see herself as someone with a voice and stories to tell.

As the pages turn, Mama Yuyi is making her own books and becoming more proficient and more confident in her art(s), and baby Kelly has become a toddler, helping his mother and drawing on his own as well.

Yuyi’s full-bleed double-page spreads are luminous. After creating the initial artwork with acrylics and pen on paper, she photographed and scanned in things that were meaningful to her: her studio floor, the comal on which she grills her quesadillas, her childhood drawings, a brick from her house, one of her chairs, a metal sheet, leaves and plants from her garden in Xalapa, hand-painted pants she had made for Kelly, a traditional wool skirt from Chiapas, and much, much more. Each spread becomes, in effect, a gorgeous giant collage of Yuyi’s life and work. 

As well, Yuyi has incorporated into her art and text a voluminous collection of titles and covers of her favorite picture books, many of which are favorites of mine as well. (I was stunned to see, for instance, Antonio Skármeta’s The Composition, a little known and important picture book about the dilemma of a young boy during the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile.) 

On the last spread of the English version (left) and the Spanish one (right) is this:

We are stories. We are two languages. We are lucha. We are resilience. We are hope. We are dreamers, soñadores of the world.

Somos historias. Somos dos lenguas. Somos lucha. Somos tenacidad. Somos esperanza. Somos soñadores, soñadores del mundo.

Yuyi wrote her autobiographical story in her second language, and Mlawer then translated it into Spanish. Although I would prefer to have seen Yuyi’s story in her own Mexican vernacular Spanish, I can understand the publisher’s wish to make the Spanish “universal.”

Both Soñadores and Dreamers are indeed a song of struggle and tenacity and hope and dreams—a song that becomes who immigrants and refugees are, rather than what they have or don’t have—Somos lucha. Somos tenacidad. Somos esperanza. Somos soñadores. Both are *highly recommended for all home, school, and library collections.

—Beverly Slapin

(published 8/13/18)

Thank you to the great Noam Szoke, Diseñador Extraordinario, for his expertise, not to mention his patience. 

Note: Yuyi Morales is a kind, generous, multi-talented soul, and I wondered why, some 20 years after she and her baby arrived here, she decided to write and publish this, her autobiographical “immigration” story. Yuyi’s honesty and generosity extends to our interview. Readers can find it below. 

INTERVIEW WITH YUYI MORALES

Beverly: When we first met in 2013, you were reading and performing Niño Wrestles the World to an audience of very young children in a public library in Oakland. As I remember, you were interacting with them in both Spanish and English, and they were transfixed on you and the images in the book. In places—especially when you dramatically and hilariously voiced Niño as he battled the monstrous imaginary enemies—the children were screaming with laughter, and their parents and library staff were delighted with your performance as well. What do you remember about that time in your life? 

Yuyi: I have lived in the USA as an immigrant for 20 years already and I am currently working in my studio in my town of birth, Xalapa, Mexico. My life is divided nowadays, as I constantly travel between Mexico and the USA to do my work and to be close to people I love in both places. I feel like I am a constant immigrant, like the monarch butterflies, or the swallows, or the free-tail bats (and many other animals) that every year make their way between Mexico and the USA. My own constant migration sustains me and my work—my heart always divided between two lands, and it is in the USA where I get to have a conversation with readers and have moments like the one you describe, where children and I get together to discover, share, and even scream with joy at the power of stories and books.

What were your thoughts as you first crossed the border, as a young mother with your baby, speaking one language; and what are your thoughts now, being able to travel back and forth as a talented and established artist and children’s book author—fluent in two languages? What changed for you and what about you remains the same? 

I was actually pretty nervous. While I was pregnant I had already been denied a tourist visa to come and meet my future baby’s family, and when I finally crossed the border—carrying papers to solicit entry with a fiancé visa—I was mentally prepared to be denied entry again. Once inside the USA, I got to meet my son’s family and I had a wedding, required by my visa, in which I didn't understand anything of what was said during the ceremony. But until that time, not speaking English hadn’t bothered me because I was in the USA visiting for only a few days and soon I would go back home to my life—or so I thought. Soon after my wedding, I learned that the visa I had been granted was not a “visiting” visa but an “immigrant” visa, which gave me the right to live in the USA—a right I was required to exercise. From that moment on, my lack of English, and unexpectedly having to make a home as a new mother in another country, became a journey I felt completely unprepared and insufficient for.

Nowadays, when I travel between the USA and Mexico, every time I present my citizenship papers at the immigration booth, I realize how fortunate and privileged I am to be able to call Mexico and the USA, both, my homes. But it took me 18 years to arrive at such a place.

For you and your baby, crossing the border involved walking across the bridge between Mexico and the US. Separating from your people, language and culture was emotionally difficult, of course. Now, for others, crossing remains all these things and is also much more dangerous. What message, if any, would you send to people on this side who may believe Trump’s reductive rhetoric about immigrants and refugees? What message would you send to the many parents and children whom this administration has forcefully separated from each other?

When my son and I entered the USA we were actually welcomed, and along the journey many people extended their hand to us—and people’s support became even more apparent when we discovered the public library. There were librarians who in doing their jobs changed my life completely. Nowadays the discourse about immigrants is so pernicious that we have become the new “boogeymen.” The Trump administration has linked the image of the immigrant to words such as crime, rape, stealing, taking what others have worked for, violence, and so many other scary terms that immigrants have become the new subhuman of whom a whole country must get rid, turn away, and exterminate rather than welcome or aid. 

I am so saddened, so enraged by this hateful rhetoric and the recent actions of separating families and criminalizing immigrants, refugees and amnesty seekers, and my helplessness multiplies every time I see people supporting these reductionist beliefs. At some points, my frustration has been so high that it has become difficult for me even to do my work, to make the books I so much love to create. But then I believe in the power of books as a way of hearing and listening to the voices of the most vulnerable ones, and with Soñadores // Dreamers I am hoping to extend an invitation for immigrants to make their voices heard through their own stories.

How do you see your stories and art engaging with people from both sides of the border? Especially, how does your story and art connect with the personal stories of other migrants and immigrants coming from Mexico and Central America? How do you see their hopes and dreams connecting with yours? What would you like to tell them?

Through all these years, as I have been sharing my books and stories, I have been meeting and talking with immigrant families, and whenever they would ask me how I had entered the USA, I could see that even in our different journeys we all had something in common. We often come heartbroken for having to leave behind our places of birth; difficult places sometimes, but to us they are places that define us and that we also love. 

And in coming to a new country we are often perceived as if we have come to steal what others have worked hard for. We are seen as invaders, takers, the ones who don’t have anything to give. This is absolutely untrue! We immigrants and refugees have so much already. And we bring all we are with us.

I would like to tell these families that all of their stories are important, and I want to work with families and children so that they can tell their own stories. It is part of the purpose of Soñadores // Dreamers.

Why did you create Soñadores //Dreamers and what subliminal messages did you think about transmitting through its creation? When you say, “Somos soñadores del mundo,” to whom are you referring and whom are you including?

As much as I like to tell stories through books—and my agent had talked with me about the need for us, as authors, to share our immigrant stories—I had never thought about making my own story into a book. And when the primaries began and then candidate Trump made attacks on immigrants a main part of his campaign, and then he won the election, I felt a big emptiness of purpose, I felt unable to work anymore. 

And I felt that my story wasn’t important. After all, I didn’t cross the desert through a dangerous journey, I didn’t enter undocumented, I had a new family who wanted me to be in the USA and were finding out how I could enter. And although in my heart it was devastating having to stay unexpectedly in the USA, I also knew that I had many advantages that most immigrants don’t have when they try to come here.

It was then that my editor and agent tapped into something I had not considered myself, and it is that my story matters, too. You know? As they encouraged me to make my immigrant journey into a picture book for young readers, there was another element I thought about: In my crossing borders, I had not done it alone. I had come with a very young baby who, together with me, had to grow and learn to thrive in a new land. The message that I wanted to bring across in Soñadores // Dreamers is something that has taken me a long time to realize and be able to put into words: that it is a fallacy that we immigrants come to a new land to take everything and give back nothing. To me it is important to uncover my own learning and to share what I have come to understand: that all of us who come to a new country bring with us amazing gifts to create a better life and a better world for everybody. Somos soñadores del mundo and we bring regalos.

¡Ningún ser humano es ilegal! (To be human is never illegal!) What does this mean to you, personally and politically?

To brand a human as illegal is an act of violence and oppression. It is a way to snatch the humanity from people in order to justify the violence acted upon them. We must fight against this labeling of people for the purpose of reducing their humanity and making it easier to wage a war against immigrants and refugees. There is much work to do.

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)

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

author: Monica Brown 

illustrator: Angela Domínguez 

Little, Brown (2017) 

grades 1-3 

Peruvian American

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

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

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

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

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

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

author: Monica Brown 

illustrator: Angela Domínguez 

Little, Brown (2017) 

grades 1-3 

Peruvian American

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—Beverly Slapin

(published 5/2/17)