Materials from the Americas
Bill just wanted someone to pass him the potatoes. Unfortunately, no one even noticed, not his mother, a very busy woman with an important job, not his father,a very important man with a busy job, not his very intelligent older brother, not even his very athletic little sister. If someone had noticed, the wonderful, terrible thing that happened might never have happened. But it did.
Sadie is a little girl with a big imagination. She has been a girl who lived under the sea and a boy raised by wolves. She has had adventures in wonderland and visited the world of fairytales. She whispers to the dresses in her closet and talks to birds in the treetops. She has wings that take her anywhere she wants to go, but that always bring her home again. She likes to make things, boats out of boxes and castles out of cushions. But more than anything Sadie likes stories, because you can make them from nothing at all. For Sadie, the world is so full of wonderful possibilities.
Loula panics when she overhears Mama saying that she can’t live with that MONSTER anymore! She knows Mama must be talking about Mister, Loula’s beloved dog, who can be a little too messy, a little too clumsy and a little too hungry. A lot of the time, Loula tells Mister if he doesn’t stop with the bad manners, Mama will throw him out, like an old pair of shoes! And what would Loula do without Mister? She’s just going to have to find a way to transform Mister the monster into the most perfect little dog no mama can resist.
A young boy and his sister gather the ingredients and grind them up in a molcajete, just like their ancestors used to do, singing and dancing all the while. The children imagine that their ingredients are different parts of an orchestra, the tomatoes are bongos and kettledrums, the onion, a maraca, the cloves of garlic, trumpets and the cilantro, the conductor. They chop and then grind these ingredients in the molcajete, along with red chili peppers for the “hotness” that is so delicious, finally adding a squeeze of lime and a sprinkle of salt. When they are finished, their mother warms tortillas and their father lays out plates, as the whole family, including the cat and dog, dance salsa in mouth-watering anticipation.
In 1770, the slave Esperança Garcia bravely penned a letter to the governor of Piauí state, in Brazil, describing how she and her children were being mistreated and requesting permission to return to the farm where the rest of her family was living. Before she wrote her letter, Esperança Garcia lived on a cotton farm run by Jesuit priests, where she learned to read and write — a rare opportunity for a woman, especially a slave. But one day, she was separated from her husband and older children and taken with her two little ones to be a cook in the home of Captain Antonio Vieira de Couto, where she and the other slaves were beaten.
Every night when his parents turn off the light, strange creatures descend from the black space where the ceiling used to be . . . First comes one, then another, and then more and more. They stand all around him, staring, not saying a word. And then, worst of all, comes the dark, shapeless one that tells him, “I am what’s there before there is anything there . . .”
Traveling Butterflies indulges the awe these creatures inspire by taking a poetic, meditative look at the monarch’s life cycle. In a lyrical voice that seamlessly blends fact and storytelling, the book zooms in to show a monarch’s progression from an egg the size of a dewdrop through growth, metamorphosis, and preparation for their journey south.
A little hedgehog is fast asleep when all of a sudden, the light clicks on. He is not happy about being woken. “Turn off that light!” he demands. The light switches off. And then on again. And off. And on. “Who keeps doing that?!” The hedgehog bumbles around, exasperated, in a flurry of onomatopoeia — GRRR!! OW! CRUNCH. BANG! — as his room mysteriously goes from dark to light over and over and over again.
The first bilingual picture book published under the Pinata Books imprint in 1994, Pat Mora’s ode to the desert is finally available in paperback format. The Desert Is My Mother creates a beautiful poetic and artistic rendition of the relationship between people and nature. Rather than being an expanse empty of life and value, the desert is lovingly presented as the provider of comfort, food, spirit, and life.
When Carlitos’ mother and the other janitors go on strike for higher wages, Carlitos cannot think of a way to support his mother until he sees her on TV making a speech, and he then gets his class to help him make a sign to show his pride.