Gathering the Sun: An Alphabet In Spanish And English by Alma Flor Ada
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I have been thinking lately that we do not honor the people who work hard doing manual labor. Things like repainting our house, replacing the roof (damaged by hail), landscaping and green area maintenance, even child care. In fact, it seems that we reserve our honor more for people who make a lot of money, rather than people who do good, honest work, day in and day out, not just manual labor, but work that simply isn't paid well. This book may not remedy that, but it does honor, and beautifully, the farm workers, especially those from Mexico.
The paintings are the first things you notice with this book - deep rich color. Palette-wise, these are not my personal favorites, but you can't help but love and appreciate the quality of these pictures. The second thing that I admire about the book is the parallel arranging of the Spanish poems with their English translations. I know a bit of Spanish - enough to puzzle out the meanings of some of the poems and then check myself by reading the English words. The translations are not always completely parallel - sometimes, the phrasing is inverted, in order to avoid awkward constructions in English, but I appreciate the effort involved in making the wordings comparable.
But, the strength of the book is really in the respect shown towards the work, the workers, and their families. It is an honor to read this book.
Recommended especially for schools that have students with Mexican ancestry or significant numbers of Spanish-speaking students. But really, just about any children could benefit from seeing this amount of respect shown to farm workers.
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