Hola!


Welcome to our blog!
This blog focuses on culturally authentic, Mexican/Latino children's literature and the authors that produce this literature. To learn more about the featured authors, click on their pictures in the left hand column to go directly to their personal web pages or biographies.

As the authors of this blog, we are both currently graduate students in the literacy program at SUNY Fredonia. We have been learning a lot about multicultural literature and how to tell whether this literature is authentic or not based on many different aspects including: language, audience, illustrations, and author style.

Although there is not one definition for cultural authenticity, we believe, much like Howard (1991) that "readers from the culture will know that it is true, will identify, and be affirmed, and readers from another culture will feel that it is true, will identify, and learn something of value, sometimes merely that there are more similarities than differences among us" (p. 92).

We have chosen 10 books from the Mexican/Latino culture that we believe to be authentic. We chose to focus on Mexican/Latino culture because it is not as highly represented in children's literature as African American or Asian American. Because we are both passionate about children's literature we decided to take a closer look at a culture that seems more underrepresented. Each blog post will focus on a different children's book and we will outline why we believe these particular books are authentic while allowing you to become more familiar with their authors and giving ideas of how to incorporate this particular book into a classroom.

We hope you enjoy the blog and would love to hear what you think!

Kayla & Amanda


Howard, E. F. (1991). Authentic multicultural literature for children: An author's perspective. In M. V. Lindgren (Ed.), The multicolored mirror: Cultural substance in literature for children and young adults (pp. 91-99). Fort Atkinson, WI: Highsmith.

Friday, April 1, 2011

The Afterlife by Gary Soto


This book written by Gary Soto, is a young adult chapter book about a boy named Jesus aka Chuy. Chuy gets tragically murdered at a nightclub at the very beginning of the book while waiting for his date, Rachel and friend, Angel. The rest of the book is from the perspective of Chuy's ghost. His ghost follows his family and friends and soon realizes everything he could have done and had while he was still alive. Chuy's ghost then finds his murderer, "Yellow Shoes" and tries to cause him harm. Soon Chuy meets another ghost, Crystal and the two fall in love, but the two quickly realize that their ghostly forms are fading. The two end up floating away together at the end of the book.

We thought The Afterlife was authentic because, like the other featured books, it uses a variety of Spanish words throughout. Like, Chato and the Party Animals, this book also has a glossary defining the Spanish words for the readers in the back. This is helpful for children to comprehend the text. It also allows them to see Spanish words in context and get a feel for how they sound and what they mean. The setting of the book, East Los Angeles, a primarily Hispanic populated area is accurately depicted in Gary Soto's chapters.

For mature young adults, this book could be great for many lessons inside the classroom. Before reading, a discussion can take place about what children think the afterlife is or what it entails. This can also lead into a conversation about religion and the differences in beliefs about the afterlife. During reading, children can write about how they would feel if they were Chuy witnessing their family mourning over them or meeting their murderer face to face, but not being able to do anything. Children can discuss all the feelings that the main character, Chuy must feel throughout the book. After reading, children can hypothesize about what they think happens to Chuy and Crystal.



For a closer look at The Afterlife, view the book trailer below from vimeo.com. ---->
The Afterlife Book Trailer created by Dan Lollis

Warning: The Afterlife should be limited to mature young adults since the topic is very serious and could cause controversy.
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