Review by Booklist Review
Ages 4-8. Juanito doesn't mind getting up at five o'clock on Sunday mornings. That's when he and Grandma Esperanza drive to the open-air flea market where, over the years, they have sold wares, and Esperanza has guided and translated for new immigrants and offered recipes, poems, comfort, and massages to tired workers. As Juanito runs happily through the stalls with his friends, the vendors repay Esperanza's kindnesses with gifts of their own--belts, fruit, jewelry, blankets--which Juanito offers to Esperanza at the story's end. The overt messages about giving, receiving, and reuse (there's no money exchanged) are balanced by the lyrical bilingual text (both languages on each spread) that celebrates the energy and warmth of the "soft city of tents and woolly walls." The parrot-colored paintings are somewhat amateurish in their rendering of people, but their folk-art details--the smiling suns and vibrantly patterned blankets--add appeal. A sunny glimpse of a Hispanic community. --Gillian Engberg
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Collecting churros, chiles and healing herbs, a Mexican-American boy bounds from booth to booth visiting fellow flea market vendors in Grandma and Me at the Flea or Los Meros Meros Remateros by Juan Felipe Herrera, illus. by Anita DeLucio-Brock. Evoking the feel of folk art, DeLucio-Brock's full-bleed illustrations form a colorful backdrop for side-by-side Spanish and English text. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Horn Book Review
In this slice-of-life story, Juanito and his grandmother sell clothes at a California flea market. Juanito spends most of his time at other booths, and HerreraÆs text is equally descriptive of the flea market ambiance in both English and Spanish. The illustrations are the weak link here, not quite attaining the true folk art quality to which they aspire. From HORN BOOK Fall 2002, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
