20. Dear Primo: A Letter to my Cousin

I picked this one up because I was looking at the list of Pura Belpré winners and honorees from the past few years. (That's the award for a book written each year by a Latino author that best portrays the Latino experience.) This one was an honor book from 2011. What's so cool about the award is that this author is relatively young and this is his first children's book. Pretty cool honor.

I usually don't talk much about the background of the author, but in this case I think the information is important. Duncan Tonatiuh is truly bicultural-- his mother is Mexican, his father is American, he grew up as a child in Mexico, then spent his teenage and adult life in New York. He was constantly going back and forth between the two countries to visit. In his author's note in the end, he mentions how he was struck to see people who looked the same in both places, but who had such different cultures. He wanted to write a book that showed even for all of our differences, 'at the end of the day, we are more similar than different. People are people.'

Now, I get a little angry when I feel like people are being color-blind and that there are no differences between people and let's hold hands. But that's not what this book is saying at all-- Tonatiuh shows his love for the uniqueness of both cultures, embracing the differences without judging them. He is saying that we can do our own things but still respect one another because in the end, we all want and need basically the same things. That is a message I want to teach to my students as well as my own children some day, and this book is a great way to do just that.

Charlie and Carlos are cousins, one in Mexico and the other in the US. (This sounds so familiar to many of my students' situations.) They've never met but they write letters back and forth to each other, telling one another about the things they do, eat, see in their countries. (It kind of reminds me of the country mouse, city mouse story because in the end they want the other to come visit.)

 The structure is a split narrative where we go back and forth from one character's story to the other. Sometimes we get a full page spread of Carlos then another of Charlie, sometimes the verso is Carlos and the recto is Charlie, and occasionally they are split horizontally across the gutter. So that we are not confused, Tonatiuh makes each cousin write in a different font. Of course the feel of each cousin's scene is different too, one looking more traditionally rural Mexican and the other looking urban Mexican-American. Also, as an added element, Carlos' side is peppered with Spanish. What's cool is that the Spanish words are also included in the page next to the picture of the object it refers to (like a picture dictionary) as well as in a glossary in the end. This makes the books accessible to any child and can teach them some Spanish in the meantime. There is even some cool imagery sprinkled in the notes. ('Skyscrapers are so tall they tickle the clouds.')

Tonatiuh hand draws the characters and scenes, then digitally colors them in and adds collage. I particularly loved the realia he used in the collage that added some texture (like jeans material, a rug, corn kernels, marbles, etc.) There were some other cute details, like the wraparound cover featuring a piece of notebook paper in the background (representing the letters). The colors were vibrant and reminiscent of Mexican homes and markets, though each cousin had his own scenes, they were always bright and full of life. His illustrations of the characters were reminiscent of an ancient Mexican (Mixtec) folk style, where the characters were all the same rounded shape and always in profile. Thus, the book combines the ancient and modern, keeping the artistic traditions of Mexico alive, but at the same time making it accessible for today's kids. 

This culturally relevant text should be on every teacher's bookshelf, no matter what color your students are.