JUNGLE CROSSING

Mexico and the Mayan people serve as metaphorical fodder to help a white American. Sullenly insecure Kat, 13, pouts on her Yucatán summer vacation. She’s missing a popularity-determining slumber party, and she fears every stereotype about Mexico from bandits to food poisoning—and Dad’s prompt case of the latter from a roadside stand gives cringeworthy textual validation to those worries. On a bus tour including ancient cities, Mayan teen Nando tells a long story. This inner tale about an elite Mayan girl, pre-Spanish conquest, awakens Kat’s confidence, but the parallel is highly problematic. One explicit comparison, between Mayan religious human sacrifice and American social sacrifice of unpopular kids, approaches the obscene. It’s as if Nando’s culture—from a pyramid that tourists are forbidden to climb but Kat does anyway, to ancient religion, to a modern quinceañera—exists primarily to inspire Kat. When she finally (it’s long overdue) releases her conviction that contemporary Mayans are dangerous, she replaces it with a shallow celebration of people who are poor but “so happy twirling around in their simple cotton dresses and bare feet.” Skip. (author’s note, glossary, online resources) (Fiction. 10-12)