Booklist Reviews MY PAPA DIEGO AND ME

My Papa Diego and Me is going strong! Keeping the pace set in these past few months, Guadalupe Rivera Marín’s book is reviewed by Booklist in its November 1st edition.

REVIEW: As in good museum exhibitions that are geared to younger viewers, this bilingual picture-book biography focuses on stories. Thirteen works by the famous Mexican painter Diego Rivera are each accompanied by an explanatory paragraph in which his daughter shares her own recollections of the artworks’ creation, meaning, and relation to familiar typical experiences, and each English passage is followed by one in Spanish. In the text accompanying the painting Picos with an Orange/ Picos con naranja, for example, Marín explains that she is the child in the painting; her father gave her fruit to help her sit still and then became annoyed when she finished the orange before he finished the painting. The format follows a somewhat thematic arrangement that covers friendship, school, holidays, and family, and the reproductions, which are sometimes just details of larger works, are clear. There is no straight biographical information on Rivera here, but that can be found in other titles. What is so special is the personal introduction to Rivera’s art and some of Mexico’s cultural traditions.

Submitted by Childrens Book Press on Tuesday, November 10, 2009 4:18pm