Describes a festival or holiday celebrated in Latin America for each month of the year, from the feast of Saint Anthony in January through Mexico’s Cinco de Mayo, an Inca festival in Peru in June, and a ritual of African origin in Brazil in September.
Americas
Materials from the Americas
High Riders, Saints and Death Cars: A Life Saved by Art
Nicholas Herrera started life as a mischievous, dyslexic boy, born into one of the old Spanish families of New Mexico. Bad teachers and poor schooling helped him to lose himself in drugs, drinking, riding motorcycles and driving fast cars. A near-death experience, a wonderful mother and a fascination with making art saved him. Today Nicholas Herrera is one of the most noted Santeros in the US. His work is displayed in folk-art galleries across the country and is collected by the Smithsonian. He is noted for the highly personal, political nature of his work and his innovative treatment of what can sometimes be a rather bland art form designed to sell to tourists. His work is intensely personal and even confessional. A survivor of alcoholism and drug addiction, which almost led to his death in a terrible car crash, Herrera is now sober and remarkably productive. His art is his life and his life is his art. Extraordinarily charismatic, Herrera is the grandson, nephew and son of artists. His young daughter is now following in his footsteps.
Carmen
A policeman’s obsessive love for a tempestuous wig factory worker ends in tragedy in this updated version of Bizet’s Carmen, set in Spanish Harlem, and told in screenplay format.
Dancing Home
A year of discoveries culminates in a performance full of surprises, as two girls find their own way to belong. Mexico may be her parents’ home, but it’s certainly not Margie’s. She has finally convinced the other kids at school she is one-hundred percent American—just like them. But when her Mexican cousin Lupe visits, the image she’s created for herself crumbles.
Things aren’t easy for Lupe, either. Mexico hadn’t felt like home since her father went North to find work. Lupe’s hope of seeing him in the United States comforts her some, but learning a new language in a new school is tough. Lupe, as much as Margie, is in need of a friend. Little by little, the girls’ individual steps find the rhythm of one shared dance, and they learn what “home” really means. In the tradition of My Name is Maria Isabel—and simultaneously published in English and in Spanish—Alma Flor Ada and her son Gabriel M. Zubizarreta offer an honest story of family, friendship, and the classic immigrant experience: becoming part of something new, while straying true to who you are.
This book has been included in WOW’s Language and Learning: Children’s and Young Adult Fiction Booklist. For our current list, visit our Booklist page under Resources in the green navigation bar.
When Apples Grew Noses and White Horses Flew
In these three imaginative stories, Jan Andrews introduces us to Quebec’s traditional folktale hero, Ti-Jean. He’s an endearing character who is both wise and foolish, and though he does find himself in hard situations (often of his own making), in the end, he somehow manages to do what needs to be done. In “Ti-Jean and the Princess of Tomboso” he eventually outwits a greedy princess; in “Ti-Jean the Marble Player” he gets the best of a pint-sized scoundrel; and in “How Ti-Jean Became a Fiddler” he turns the tables on a too-clever-for-her-own-good seigneur’s daughter, and finds true love in the process.
City Numbers
Joanne Schwartz and Matt Beam have discovered numbers in many different forms all over the city. They are on houses and apartment buildings, on store windows and doors, on trucks and garbage bins, on sidewalks and parking spots. They are printed, spray-painted, molded in plastic, chiseled in stone, stamped on vinyl, even torched into metal. We see these numbers, often unconsciously, every day, but the wonderful photographs in this book prompt us to look at them more closely, becoming aware and alive to the art, serendipity and variety that surround us.
Migrant
Migrant farmers and their families represent an ever-growing body of laborers around the world. They are used as cheap labor but most of them are not allowed to settle down, integrate into their host countries and become citizens with full rights. This is, of course, devastating to their children.
Among these groups are the Mennonites from Mexico, who originally went to Mexico from Canada in the 1920s. They speak “Low German” and though many are poor, they are an important part of the Mexican farm community. Because of free trade and the fact that Mexican farmers cannot compete with highly subsidized US farmers, they have been forced to come back to Canada — as migrant workers — in order to survive. Anna is the child of Mennonites from Mexico, who have come north to harvest fruit and vegetables. Sometimes she feels like a bird, flying north in the spring and south in the fall, sometimes like a jackrabbit in an abandoned burrow, since her family occupies an empty farmhouse near the fields, sometimes like a kitten, as she shares a bed with her sisters. But above all Anna wonders what it would be like to be a tree rooted deeply in the earth, watching the seasons come and go, instead of being like a “feather in the wind.”
The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School
When a class leaves for recess, their just-baked Gingerbread Man is left behind. But he’s a smart cookie and heads out to find them. He’ll run, slide, skip, and (after a mishap with a soccer ball) limp as fast as he can because: “I can catch them! I’m their Gingerbread Man!” With help from the gym teacher, the nurse, the art teacher and even the principal, the Gingerbread Man does find his class, and he’s assured they’ll never leave him behind again.
Bradley Mcgogg
Bradley McGogg makes his home in the bog where there are plenty of yummy bugs for a frog to feed on. But one day Bradley finds that his cupboard is bare. He turns to his neighbors to see if they will share their dinner with him. He soon finds that not all animals eat alike…With its infectious rhyming text and its enchanting art, Bradley McGogg, the Very Fine Frog is bound to become a favorite with children and the people who try to feed them.
The Flying Canoe: A Christmas Story
One frosty Christmas Eve in the Canadian wilderness, six homesick fur traders are visited by a mysterious stranger. The man claims that he can send them home to faraway Montreal that very night, but on one condition: they must not utter a word until they reach their homes. Agreeing to the terms, the fur traders climb into an enchanted canoe and paddle through the sky. But when hot-headed Armand cannot keep silent, it will take a daring move to outwit the stranger.