- Pedrito's World
Life is simple and good for six-year-old Pedrito in South Texas in 1941. He is finally old enough to travel with his father to San Antonio to sell watermelons, he is ready to start school, where his teacher, Miss García, is patient and kind, and he has an older friend, Juanito, who looks after him. This fictive memoir, written in lively, straightforward prose, follows Pedrito through his school year, where he works [End Page 476] hard to learn English so that he can teach it to his parents. Each chapter relates an aspect of Pedrito's life on their small farm: he recounts the homely details of what they eat and how his mother cooks it, how difficult it is to say goodbye to beloved animals that end up in his mother's tasty tamales, how his family spends their evenings telling stories and singing songs, how they communicate with relatives across the river, and how important Doña María, the village curandera, is in their lives. He also writes simply but effectively of the sadness he faces when Juanito dies of pneumonia. His awareness of his family's poverty and the prejudice they sometimes face is softened by his mother's less materialistic, more spiritual and people-oriented value system and his father's persistent hope for Pedrito's future. Through the voice of Pedrito, Martínez pays attention to the things that children care about, such as food, school, friends, privacy, and family; combine this with books like Little House on the Prairie and Erdrich's The Birchbark House (BCCB 7/99) for a multicultural look at children's everyday lives in different times and places in America's history. A glossary of Spanish words and an author's note on source material, including family pictures, are included.