Mi Familia Calaca: My Skeleton Family (Bilingual English/Spanish)
by Cynthia Weill (Author) Jesús Zarate (Illustrator)
They're just like everybody else. Except they're all bones! Welcome to the family!
It's just like yours: father, mother, sister, brother, abuelita, gato, even a great-great grandmother. Well, but there's something just a little bit different about this particular family. Maybe it's those clothes they wear... just a little bit fashion backward. And the colors! So vibrant and... lively. Maybe that's what it is. They are just so full of life while looking almost other worldly.
Cynthia Weill's bilingual collaboration with artist Jesus Canseco Zarate teaches young readers basic information about relationships, while also celebrating the colorful tradition of Mexico's Day of the Dead. Canseco Zarate long-limbed sculptures are a playful twist on traditional Mexican iconography of the skeleton that stretches back through the country's art history to José Guadalupe Posada's engravings and Aztec sculpture.
Son como todos los demás. ¡Excepto que son todos huesos! ¡Bienvenido a la familia!
Es justo como la tuya: papá, mamá, hermana, hermano, abuelita, gato, hasta un a vis-abuela. Pero hay algo un poco diferente sobre esta familia. Tal vez es la su ropa... es un poco anticuada. Y los colores! Tan vibrantes y... vivos. Tal vez eso es, solo están llenos de vida, al mismo tiempo pareciendo de otro mundo.
La colaboración bilingüe entre autora Cynthia Weill y artista Jesus Canseco Zarate le enseña a lectores jóvenes información básica sobre familias, al mismo tiempo celebrando la tradición colorida del Día de Muertos. Las esculturas de brazos largos de Canseco Zarate le dan un toque juguetón a la iconografía Mexicana tradicional del esqueleto, que se ve a lo largo de la historia artística del país, hasta los grabados de José Guadalupe Posada, y las esculturas Aztecas.
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Review quotes
"Oaxacan folk artist Zárate creates papier-mâché sculptures of Day of the Dead-style skeletons that grin widely as a young skeleton named Anita introduces her family. . . Zárate's sculptures exude personality." — Publishers Weekly
"Though they are skeletons, this family couldn't be friendlier. . . The details traditional Oaxacan artist Canseco Zárate includes charm as fully as Weill's crunchy vocabulary. . . They may be dead, but their affection is palpable. Just right for the Day of the Dead or for a fresh take on family structure- tan lindo!" — Kirkus Reviews
"The photographed Oaxacan folk-art figures will make readers smile as each one has a fixed grin, as one would expect from a well-dressed skeleton. . . This book would be a welcome and culturally relevant addition to beginning-reader collections." — School Library Journal
Choices, Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
Best Children's & Young Adult Books of the Year, Bank Street College of Education
Junior Library Guild Selection
Cynthia Weill's fascination with the crafts of Oaxaca began while she was working in Mexico as a Fulbright exchange teacher. She has published several books in the First Concepts in Mexican Folk Art series, which features different folk art of Oaxaca. Many of the figures showcased in this series are now part of the permanent Mesoamerican Anthropology collections at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois. Cindy lives in New York City and online at cynthiaweill.net.
The Aguilar Sisters -- Guillermina, Josefina, Irene, and Concepción --are Mexico's most beloved folk art artisans. They learned how to make clay figurines from their mother, and their humorous ceramics of the people of their town and state are in museum collections around the world. The sisters have been visited by the late Queen Elizabeth of England, the former Queen Sofía of Spain, and various Mexican presidents.
JNF019030 - Juvenile Nonfiction | Family | Multigenerational
JNF006060 - Juvenile Nonfiction | Art | Sculpture
