FIESTA FIASCO

In this español-laced trickster tale featuring the cast from Mañana, Iguana (2004), Conejo the rabbit “helps” Iguana and Tortuga select singularly unsuitable gifts, like a shirt, for Culebra the snake’s cumpleaños (birthday). The tortoise and lizard have their doubts, but go along—and like the snake are so outraged at Conejo’s disingenuous offer to wear the clothes himself that they chase him away from the fiesta until he exchanges the duds for better presents. Long places his pop-eyed, blunt-nosed cartoon figures in a sere desert setting, and closes with a look ahead to Conejo’s birthday fiesta—at which (unsurprisingly, considering that he’d already tipped his hand) he gets exactly what he wanted. Like its predecessor, this sunny tale offers a pronunciation glossary, plus artful translations in context and in the pictures, that will help to acquaint younger children with both the sound of Spanish, and a few words of the language. (Picture book. 6-8)