Postcards

With this novel Rosalba Guzman confirms that children’s literature may address challenging topics, such as exclusion, the use of power against the helpless ones, the subtle and silent struggle of those sentenced to death, and the solidarity of the underprivileged. The story tells of animals and people inside a school library, where complicated feelings regarding the death sentence of Julia, the mouse, are captured with skill. The book’s skillful use of humor and linguistic diversity unlocks this book’s educational potential. It is a novel about language, though it still has engaging characters and situations, risks and solutions, plot and scenery. As well as being an imaginative space for children, Guzman’s book becomes a platform for raising awareness of language itself. The mouse is saved by the power of words, in the seductive fashion of Scheherazade, by telling tales of the feline realm and thus wooing the cat, Lindolfo. This tale is a love song to books and a tribute to the power of words.

Gaby Vallejo Canedo

Rosalba Guzman Soriano

Conquistando a Lindolfo[Wooing Lindolfo]

Bolivia: Editorial Santillana, 2008
120 p.
ISBN: 9789990597305
(YA novel)

In this exciting and beautifully illustrated picture book, an open-ended birthday party invitation leads to a surprisingly well-attended and diverse gathering. The child narrator of the book playfully warns the reader that inviting “anyone you’d like” to your birthday party encourages not only your peers to attend the festivities, but their families as well. Each guest brings a sibling and their mother to the birthday party, and a specialty dish originating from the culture to which they belong. The party is diverse, with guests from countries all over the world, as Machado and Moreau beautifully depict cultural and traditional diversity. The illustrations are captivating, and the use of color and attention to detail make this picture book engaging. Cultural foods, colors, and clothing are incorporated throughout, and the young reader is able to pick up on the cultural diversity permeating the text. While the book does successfully create a cultural mosaic, it fails to incorporate fathers into the text. Each guest brings food prepared solely by his or her mother, and the book would have benefited from depictions of dads who cook.

Samantha Christensen

Ana María Machado
(Illus. Hélène Moreau)

What a Party!

Toronto: Groundwood, 2013
32 p.
ISBN: 1554981689
(Picture book, ages +3)

This quirky book evokes the tradition of magical realism, using a child’s-eye view of the world around her to ask questions about what is commonplace and what is unusual. When the central character ventures out of her house in the morning, she sees such strange sights that she can’t believe no one around her seems to find these things noteworthy. The people she sees around her have either very unusual physical characteristics or strange behaviours, including a role reversal where a dog walks a man on a leash through a park. This book simultaneously raises questions around how we define “normal” and how we become blind to the mysteries embedded in our everyday lives. For adults reading this book, it may spark musings on how our own assumptions about what is mundane may be very different from someone’s in another context. It also draws on the tradition of the story of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” where a child unfettered by convention is able to identify a truth that others fear to name. Children will delight in the absurd images of men with clarinet noses or birdbath chins and women with flower gardens or fish bowls on their heads, but be left with the question at the end: “What does it mean to be different?”

Deena Hinshaw

Paula Bossio

Los Diferentes
[Th e diff erent Ones]

Bogotá, Colombia:
Editorial GatoMalo, 2012
32 p.
ISBN: 978-958-57365-0-4
(Picturebook; Ages 3+)

This collaborative project began with students Fatma Al Remaihi and Al-Hussein Wanas, who collected folktales from Arabian Gulf countries, and then approached their professors with...