Mora,
P., & Colón, R. (1997). Tomás and the library lady. New York: Knopf.
Being
apart of a migrant family means moving from place to place to find work. Tomas
is upset that he is leaving Texas for Iowa, but he must go with his family.
There is finds a love for the library and reading of dinosaurs. He even helps
the librarian learn some Spanish during his stay. With his new fond love of
reading, Tomas is able to share stories with his family and Papa Grande and
become the family’s new storyteller.
Pat
Mora tells the story through a child’s point of view, the main character,
Tomas. As Tomas travels with his family he provides the reader with a sense of hard
work and family. Mora fosters the love of reading through Tomas as she
introduces the library to him. There he becomes engulfed in the books and becomes
the family’s new storyteller. Throughout the pages Mora provides the reader
with bilingual phrases. Readers can read them aloud to hear how different the
languages are and see how similar different cultural stories can be. By
providing the bilingual statements, Mora is showing the Latino children that
their culture is important and they are valuable to their families and
community. The librarian who embraces Tomas demonstrates that in the end we can
all teach one another a different language and learn to appreciate one
another’s language.
Raul
Colon fills the pages with earth tones of browns, greens, yellows, reds, and
oranges. Facial features and clothing are simplistic with fine lines with dual
but warm hues, but do show the expressions of the characters and movement of
the clothing. Colon illustrates for the readers the importance of storytelling
from generation to generation, from the grandpa to his grandchildren as they
sit around the tree in the field they are currently working in. When Tomas is imagining his character of the
books he is reading, Colon is very detailed in the features of the dinosaurs,
cowboys and Indians, and surrounding backgrounds. The hues become brighter as
Tomas comes to the library of purples and turquoise of the librarian’s dress.
With subtle colors from beginning to end, the reader has a sense of calm as
they turn the pages and find themselves a part of Tomas’ readings.
As
a child and still today as an adult, hearing stories is always something that I
cherish. I especially cherish the stories of my late mother from the moment of
her birth to her last breath and every story in between. Listening to stories
from and about family brings a sense of togetherness even if it is for a brief
moment or the saddest moments. It allows families to create an everlasting
bond. Storytelling provides generation after generation to hear of what impacts
the family line had experienced, what challenges the ancestors faced, to where
the family comes from. Hearing such
stories gives each and everyone of us a identity that we can say we belong to
and identify with.
Reviews
School
Library Journal
Grade
2-4: Tomas Rivera, who at his death in 1984 was the Chancellor of the
University of California at Riverside, grew up in a migrant family. Here, Mora
tells the fictionalized story of one summer in his childhood during which his
love of books and reading is fostered by a librarian in Iowa, who takes him
under her wing while his family works the harvest. She introduces him to
stories about dinosaurs, horses, and American Indians and allows him to take
books home where he shares them with his parents, grandfather, and brother.
When it is time for the family to return to Texas, she gives Tomas the greatest
gift of all, a book of his own to keep. Colon's earthy, sun-warmed colors,
textured with swirling lines, add life to this biographical fragment and help
portray Tomas's reading adventures in appealing ways. Stack this up with Sarah
Stewart and David Small's The Library (Farrar, 1995) and Suzanne Williams and
Steven Kellogg's Library Lil (Dial, 1997) to demonstrate the impact librarians
can have on youngsters. Barbara Elleman, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI
Copyright
1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
