Whether it is Yucatan or all points south to Santiago, the liability for juvenile fiction set in Latin America is that familiar plot which has a poor Indian boy stumbling on ancient Spanish, Aztec, or Inca gold, then selling it and turning the proceeds over to parents or Church or both. Miguel lived in Condor Valley in the Andes. His father farmed with primitive tools but, poor as they were, the family was better off than most. Miguel's Uncle Pedro, a peddler, took him on a selling trip across the mountains, partly in thanks for Miguel's teaching him to read and partly to satisfy a growing boy's restless curiosity. From villages and Indian settlements to the city, the boy's eyes are opened wide to such things as trains and electricity, etc. (More exciting to him, perhaps, than to his readers.) In the city, he meets Senor Michael, a young American, and together they find the tone rabbit that turns out to be gold and is inevitably traded to the state museum for seeds and plowshares. So closely do Miguel's parents reflect the frets and concerns of poor but proud rural Americans, that the llamas might just as well be heep and the Andes the Rockies.