NACAR, THE WHITE DEER

alo, a Mexican goatherd, is chosen to care for an ailing albino deer intended as a gift for the King of Spain in 1630. Mute since early childhood when is cries failed to rouse his mother from a burning hut, Lalo trains the deer to respond to a flute and brings it to health with herbs and grasses. Nacar, the deer, lost once but found again without creating any reader doubt or sense of danger. Appointed to accompany the deer to Spain, Lalo manages to cry out when the King commands that the white deer be turned loose as a challenge to hunters. The King eclares this restoration of voice a miracle, spares the deer and arranges Lalo's future as a chorister and then as landed gentry. Until the 1630-ish miracle aspects, the book is uncomfortably reminiscent of Marguerite Henry's Newbery Medal ?winner, King of the Wind (in plot and character--never in strength or the ability to touch the reader).