From School Library Journal
Gr 3-6-Poems in Spanish and in English communicate
the poet's memories of being a boy in El Salvador and in San Francisco.
"Here chickens come/in plastic bags/Over there/they slept beside me." The
lines capture the pleasures and difficulties of living in each country,
but mostly, they capture the sense of being a child in the city. "My
bicycle/is a dragon/dancing/cumbias/all the way/to El Salvador." Small
notes next to the poems explain potentially unfamiliar terms (the cumbia
is a Latin dance). Argueta has published several books of poetry, but this
is his first for children. Gomez's rich and bright paintings fill
every spread with the same joy and literal humor that she used in Juan
Felipe Herrera's The Upside Down Boy.
The style is almost primitive, and combines with the
"handwritten" typeface to make the book feel immediate and comfortable.
The author's introduction and the artist's title-page map of North America
give context to the poet's experiences, making this an appealing choice to
fill the need for books about Salvadore-os, as well as an excellent
addition to any poetry collection.-Nina Lindsay, Oakland Public Library,
CA
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
For this book, Elizabeth created 18 original paintings using acrylic
on paper.
