Dorros, A. (1991). Abuela. Puffin.
In this story, a little girl named Rosalba goes to the park with her Abuela, or grandmother. The grandmother primarily speaks Spanish and is an immigrant living in New York City with her family. Throughout the book, there are Spanish words and phrases blended into the primarily English text, but the meaning of the Spanish is always explained in the context of the story, or can be figured out by the surrounding sentence and using inference skills. The two take off on an “adventure” in their creative minds, and that’s where we spend the majority of the picture book flying with them on their imaginary flight in the sky. Abuela and Rosalba take the reader with them on a beautiful virtual tour of the neighborhood and the nearby city of New York. The illustrator, Elisa Kleven, has created mesmerizing collages that depict an amazing bird’s eye view of the city. The boldness of the great variety of pattern and saturation of so many colors enhance the aerial views that are chock full of attention to detail, from all the people inside of building windows to the people involved in a multitude of activities that makes a big city a buzzing place of activity. Again, I think this book would be a beneficial choice to talk about multi-cultural aspects, especially providing students and readers an opportunity to be exposed to a culture that they may not be very familiar with at all. The technique of illustrating could easily be “replicated” by students in their own traveling adventures and would make for a great display of published and illustrated stories. Great text-to-text connections could be made both in comparing the text and similarities in the book using the book Tar Beach, which has somewhat of an identical imaginary type of aerial view through part of its story, as well as its own version of patchwork like collage illustrations. I recommend this book, especially for making extensions with and connections to units of study and other trade books.
In this story, a little girl named Rosalba goes to the park with her Abuela, or grandmother. The grandmother primarily speaks Spanish and is an immigrant living in New York City with her family. Throughout the book, there are Spanish words and phrases blended into the primarily English text, but the meaning of the Spanish is always explained in the context of the story, or can be figured out by the surrounding sentence and using inference skills. The two take off on an “adventure” in their creative minds, and that’s where we spend the majority of the picture book flying with them on their imaginary flight in the sky. Abuela and Rosalba take the reader with them on a beautiful virtual tour of the neighborhood and the nearby city of New York. The illustrator, Elisa Kleven, has created mesmerizing collages that depict an amazing bird’s eye view of the city. The boldness of the great variety of pattern and saturation of so many colors enhance the aerial views that are chock full of attention to detail, from all the people inside of building windows to the people involved in a multitude of activities that makes a big city a buzzing place of activity. Again, I think this book would be a beneficial choice to talk about multi-cultural aspects, especially providing students and readers an opportunity to be exposed to a culture that they may not be very familiar with at all. The technique of illustrating could easily be “replicated” by students in their own traveling adventures and would make for a great display of published and illustrated stories. Great text-to-text connections could be made both in comparing the text and similarities in the book using the book Tar Beach, which has somewhat of an identical imaginary type of aerial view through part of its story, as well as its own version of patchwork like collage illustrations. I recommend this book, especially for making extensions with and connections to units of study and other trade books.
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