Fiction

How Hollyhocks Came to New Mexico is a fanciful folk tale that helps explain the beautiful flowers that can be seen in all parts of the Southwest in the summer and fall. --from book's back cover

This fast-paced mystery expands the ChupaCabra folklore into a metaphor that deals with the new powers inherent in science. --from book's flap

A bilingual retelling of a traditional Mexican folktale about the making of tortillas.

The legendary ChupaCabra, the goatsucker, is set loose in the streets, like the meth that is destroying its young victims' minds. --from book's flap

Andrés's grandpa Don Jacobo is a master santero, a carver of wooden saints, and the 10-year-old helps him make a statue of San Isidro during his holiday break from school. When a New Mexico snowstorm blocks the roads, a miracle involving the wooden saint allows an ambulance to get to a sick neighbor and the boy's parents and sister to arrive in time for Christmas. The story is presented in both English and Spanish, and the Spanish terms sprinkled throughout the English text are explained in a glossary.

In this original folkloric tale, Desert Woman creates "a new animal," with input from the existing desert creatures, to stand up to Rattlesnake, the self-styled "king of the road." She gathers clay from the Sacred Mountain and forms the body, allowing each of the others to "bring a gift for our new friend." Deer gives him slender legs to run fast; Eagle gives him strength; Heron, a long beak; Coyote, sharp eyes; and, from Desert Woman herself, comes the gift of dance.

Chicano novelist Rudolfo Anaya was greatly influenced by the heroic life of labor and civil rights activist César Chávez. After Chávez' death in 1993, Anaya wrote this elegy eulogizing the man and his life's work. Echoing Shelley's elegy on the death of John Keats, the poem expresses the grief of la gente, but closes by calling all peoples together to continue his non-violent struggle for freedom and justice. --from book's back cover

A collection of ten original and traditional stories set in New Mexico, including "Lupe and la Llorona," "The Shepherd Who Knew the Language of Animals," and "Coyote and Raven." --UNM Library

Readers again meet Luz and her grandfather, introduced in The Farolitos of Christmas (Hyperion, 1995), shortly before he passes away. Through the seasons, Luz mourns the loss of Abuelo and keeps his memory alive by working in their garden in the summer and harvesting it in the fall. When Christmas comes, the girl places farolitos around his grave, and when the other townspeople see the warm, festive sight, they follow suit and a tradition is born. The figures in the oil paintings are again modeled after Gonzales's friends and family and the lanterns give the illustrations a luminous glow.

Anaya's adaptation of the legend of La Llorona into a children's book. La Llorona, or the crying woman, is a legend known in many forms and versions across Latin America.