A cozy, bilingual, wool-lined fairytale

 

“La Princesa and the Pea”
Written by Susan Middleton Elya, Illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal
Recommended age: Pre-K – 3^rd

 

When I asked my town’s librarian for help in looking up this book’s location in her stacks, she was thrown off by it being placed in the English language section, when the title almost sounds like it should be in their Spanish language collection. That combination of Spanish and English in the title was a preview of this picture book’s mixed cultural references and language. This is a modern retelling of the fairytale  “The Princess and the Pea”, set in Peru, the country where the illustrator Juan Martinez-Neal grew up in and studied art.

Susan Middleton Elya’s rhyming verse is mostly written in English, with a few Spanish words peppering the lines, highlighted with a red text color. These red words and translated for any non-Spanish readers with a helpful glossary at the front of the book.

I only know a little bit of Spanish from middle and high school, with too few opportunities to practice it in my adulthood, but I enjoyed that the author uses the Spanish words to enhance the rhyming scheme. I even learned a few new pieces of vocabulary from this book. This retelling of the classic story also focuses more on the comedic aspects and on the smitten young people than other versions.

The illustrations won the 2018 Pura Belpré award, which the ALSC awards to Latinx childrens’ writers and illustrators “whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience”. Looking at the soft-edged, wooly-looking, traditional-media drawings, this award was selected well, especially when you factor in the note at the end of the book, which explains Martinez-Neal’s influences for this project.

The book is packed full of characters wearing colorful woven clothing, and the floors and backgrounds on almost every page include at least one example of alpacas, wool threads drying or being dyed, or patterned blankets hanging on lines. 

Note the dyed Alpaca wool drying in the background, and the Guinea pigs, popular pets in Peru, in the foreground

Martinez-Neal included these details because she was inspired by the textile culture of the indigenous people of Peru. She specifically modeled the clothing of two different characters on those of peoples from two distinct regions of the country. This effort of including accurate details stands in stark contrast to a long tradition of children’s books created by people entirely outside of the depicted indigenous culture blending aspects of different peoples' cultures together haphazardly.  

Overall, this fractured fairy tale lends a sweet touch to an elementary classroom’s read-alongs, or to a children’s library. I recommend it for any collection that needs more variety in their fairytales.

 

Word count: 414

Some kids never stop the 'asking why about everything' phase. They become scientists.

 

"Ada Twist, Scientist" 
Written by Andrea Beaty, Illustrated by David Roberts 
Recommended Age: PreK-2nd Grade

As soon as the 3-year-old Ada Twist was big enough to crawl out of her crib on her own, she was exploring, showing her boundless curiosity before she could speak. She pushed at the outlines of her toddler world, made messes, and climbed to dangerous heights on furniture, spurred by an intense need to know more. Her first-ever word was “Why” – the word behind the wonder that inspires scientists to wake up every morning.

She is a practicing scientist as soon as she has enough hand-eye coordination and language skills to ask, to draw, and to test theories.

Her parents react with loving encouragement, keeping up with her questions and intense interests. As she makes it through second grade, her science-based play progresses from cause-and-effect demonstrations to more advanced theorizing, and she finds a mystery that focuses her freewheeling curiosity into the rigor of a real experiment. During this exploration, she missteps, coming close to hurting someone. Her parents finally must step in, and stop her. Does her research career end here, before it can even begin? Is there a limit to her parents’ and her classmates’ acceptance of her spirited scientific self?

This book’s text is written in unforced rhymes of simple words, which topple and fall out of the mouth like normal speech that just happens to rhyme. This is ideal for reading aloud to children between four and six years old, as the rhythm, language, and rhymes make the text enjoyable to both read aloud and listen to.

The illustrations are both neat and expressive. The precise pen lines and watercolor fills are an ideal choice for a story about the controlled chaos of scientific experiment. The emotions on the simply-drawn faces are universal and clear to young readers, while piles of detailed objects on many pages lend visual interest to children. They will enjoy reading the subtle language of the pictures while listening to the written words.

This book is part of a collection of many sequels, including a series of chapter books for transitional readers, as well as a Netflix television adaptation. I see why. It is charming, well-drawn, and relevant to the last few decades’ intense focus on STEM immersion for all K-12 students. The original picture book is recommended for class read-alongs, especially as an introduction to a science unit for this age range.

Word Count: 374

"Mexikid": A comic-adventure-real-life-coming-of-age story

“Mexikid” by Pedro Martín

Recommended Age: Grades 5-9

Awards Won:

•  2024 Pura Belpré - Author and Illustrator Awards
• Newberry Honor

Pedro Martín was a middle-school-aged child with a big imagination in the late 1970’s. That’s when he, his two parents,  and his 8 siblings took a lengthy road trip from central California to Mexico to bring his Abuelito home to live with them. What could have been a long and stressful drive instead turns into a grand adventure in Pedro’s child’s-eye perspective, stuffed full of action, Fanta, sibling pranks, corrupt border guards, and car trouble.

Many memorable characters fill the narrative of this graphic memoir, but the central relationship is between Pedro and his Abuelito. Pedro had met him during previous trips to Mexico, but he only remembered distant and formal interactions.

As the family caravan gets ready and then starts driving, Pedro starts imagining his Abuelito as a larger-than-life war hero, based on stories from Pedro’s father and sister about his time as a supplier to troops during the Mexican Revolution from 1910-1917. He imagines him as a comic book hero, in multi-page spreads that visually reference golden-age adventure and superhero comics.

Pedro’s view of his family matures over the course of the book, as he learns how to admire and get to know his Abuelito in a more grounded and reality-based way.

In addition, this memoir chronicles Pedro’s changing insecurities and confidence about his Mexican-American identity. He feels too American to be fully Mexican, but he also feels like he must be Mexican. This book could be of specific interest to students who are curious or concerned about their own cross-cultural identity.

The family is introduced with national symbols

This book is also partially a travelogue about the family’s journey through Mexico. Pedro’s father manages to find new friends and their distant relations in every town they stop in, so the trip they take is from an insider’s perspective. This turns this book into a universally relatable portrait of a beautiful and inviting country. This aspect, along with the nuanced and loving family dynamics, the vibrant and expressive comic art, humor, action, and misfortunes, combine to make this into a book I enthusiastically suggest adding to everyone’s shelves for children 10-14.

A travel-focused spread in the iconic style of Diego Rivera

A final note: if your library has a graphic novel section, this should be added as a prime example of a graphic memoir. This sequential art tradition has been innovative and active in the world of comics made for adults for decades, and this work could be a great way to introduce the concept to young people.

Word count before this: 402 words

Content warning for the book  (Minor spoilers ahead):

"Melissa" - a transgender tale of trials and triumphs

"Melissa," by Alex Gino

Recommended Age: Grades 4-6 

Melissa is about a fourth grade student named George, who enjoys video games, riding her bike, good books, and joking around with her best friend, a girl named Kelly.

The close third-person narrator describes George with the pronoun set she/her/hers, but the rest of the characters use the pronouns he/him/his. Every gendered pronoun, every gender-segregated school line-up, every reference to how well-behaved a ‘boy’ she is, causes her emotional pain. The pain from this mismatch between how others see her and how she sees herself builds to a boiling point when George auditions for the lead girl’s part in the school play.

How will her friends, family, classmates, and authority figures react to this transgression in the rules of the school play?

One of the things that I enjoyed about this book was how theater, which has traditionally been a welcoming space for gender nonconforming and queer students, played a central role in the coming-out narrative for the transgender main character.  This has echoes in my own experience as a nonbinary person, and I think this detail might act as a guidepost or a relatable moment for young readers.

Gino writes an engrossing narrative rich in both scene-setting observations, and in the small, emotionally fraught social details that can either destroy or rescue an entire week for a child at this age.

The reactions that people in George’s life have to her changing gender identity could have been lifted out of the diary entries of myself and my transgender friends. It’s clear that the author is writing about the transgender experience as someone who has lived it themselves.

This work was highly relatable to me, even though I came to my nonbinary experience from the ‘opposite’ side, and I recommend it fully to any young readers of any pronoun set, who are curious about their own gender nonconformity or identity. This narrative has the potential to help children who are anything like George feel less alone in their struggle. It might even help them plan and hope for a better future.

Other readers without this personal connection are still likely to enjoy for it for its well-told, poignant story about a child coming to terms with themselves, in a world that both passively and actively fights against her existence. These difficulties come across as even more challenging to all readers, in today’s political and cultural climate, which has made existing as a transgender youth literally illegal in many states, and an unpleasant public debate topic for students who just want to live as themselves in basically the entire English-speaking world.

Read more about the book at Alex Gino’s personal website.

Word count: 437

"What is your Quest?"

This blog will chronicle and aid my journey from one career field to another. 

Most of the posts here will focus on my goal to help young people nurture a passion for reading, and on developing their imagination, as a school Media Specialist.

But in this introductory post, I must digress. I want to let you know who I am, and why I am here.