A warm, yet slightly distant, recollection of a childhood on the road.
For years as a child, García would travel north from Texas with her parents and 11 siblings as they worked the various fields picking tomatoes, strawberries and other produce. This succinct bilingual memoir presents the experience through brief vignettes.
The author recalls the rituals of the journey: wrapping the dishes the night before leaving; meticulously packing everything in boxes and bags; hauling the parcels to the pickup truck and camper that would be the family’s home on the road. Specific landmarks and changes in geography revealed how far they had traveled and how many miles were yet ahead. In Michigan, they reached their second home, known as Ponderosa Place, where the family worked the harvest season. As the youngest, the author did not join the others in field work but attended school, which was difficult for her as the only bilingual child. The memoir, appropriate in length and level for emerging independent readers, is heartfelt and direct. However, details that might make it resonate more deeply are sparse. The child’s experience of traveling with a family of migrant workers is presented, but the relationships within the family are not explored outside of the author’s appreciation for her family’s hard work and sacrifice.
A warm, yet slightly distant, recollection of a childhood on the road. (bilingual) (Memoir. 7-11)Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-55885-780-3
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Piñata Books/Arte Público
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013
Engaging stories that will hook kids, send them looking for traditional stories, and perhaps encourage some to take up the...
A storyteller puts her own stamp on 15 traditional tales from four different continents about shape-shifters, those people who turn into animals and back again.
In her afterword, Don explains, “I’ve altered all these stories as I tell them to make them work for me and for the audience I’m telling to.” She carefully states her sources and then explains her adaptations, sometimes saying that children have given her ideas. There are occasional anachronisms. “Yuck” seems to be a favorite way to express disgust, but Don wants her readers to feel comfortable. If she loses some gravity in her tellings, she quickly gains readers’ interest. A kid understands completely the boy who becomes a buzzard in a tale from Mexico and says “Yuck!” when he finds out that he must eat dead bodies. “Mom” and “dad” are used in the final story, about a child becoming a werewolf, more original than most of the others, although “inspired” by a German tale. The black vignettes (occasionally reused) and the small drawings of a branch with a caterpillar from “The Ashkelon Witches” (a Jewish folk tale) appearing as a header and the snakes from “The Snake Prince” (from the Punjab) flanking the page numbers contribute to the book’s handsome design. Two other series entries publish simultaneously: Ghosts and Goblins: Scary Stories from Around the World and Magic and Mystery: Traditional Stories from around the World, both by Maggie Pearson and illustrated by Greenwood.
Engaging stories that will hook kids, send them looking for traditional stories, and perhaps encourage some to take up the art of oral (and written) storytelling. (Fiction. 8-11)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5124-1321-2
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Darby Creek
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
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A gallery of diminutive delights—but the appeal is superficial at best.
A little world tour of little things—from the smallest sea horse to the largest model railway.
With a small trim size suitable to the topic and diminutive narrative type to match (the latter not always a good idea, particularly when the background color is dark brown or purple), this gathering offers armchair travelers a small-scale mix of natural and constructed minimarvels on each continent. The 20 entries are placed on introductory and inset maps, and they’re depicted with miniscule exactitude in painted illustrations—many of these featuring a pair of avid young white tourists to show relative size. But for all that readers will come away with a yen to see the world’s smallest teddy bears in South Korea’s Teddy Bear Museum or play minigolf under black lights in Berlin, not to mention understanding the importance of krill to the Antarctic marine ecosystems, as a travel guide it’s all rather arbitrary and rough-hewn. Many creatures and sites appear on the introductory maps but nowhere else; there are no leads to more information about any of the selected wonders; and measurements throughout are in a casual mix of metric and English units.
A gallery of diminutive delights—but the appeal is superficial at best. (Nonfiction. 8-10)Pub Date: March 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-84780-909-4
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Wide Eyed Editions
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
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