Every Sunday Juanito helps his grandmother sell old clothes beneth the rainbow-colored tents at the remate, the flea market. There, Juanito and his friends romp from booth to booth, fulfilling Grandma's vision of the remate as a sharing community of friendly give-and-take.
Juanito gallops to the jewelry-man, who gives Juanito a copper bracelet and a watch for Grandma in exchange for her help sending money orders home to Mexico. Señora Vela gratefully accepts a bundle of Grandma's healing herbs in return for sacks of ruby red chiles. With every exchange Juanito learns firsthand what it means to be a true rematero - a fleamarketeer - and understands that the value of community can never be measured in dollars.
Juan Felipe Herrera is one of the foremost Mexican American poets writing today. His first book for children, Calling the Doves, received the prestigious Ezra Jack Keats Award honoring the most promising new author for children. In addition to being a poet, he is also an actor, a musician, and a popular professor at the University of California in Riverside.
Anita De Lucio-Brock was born in Hidalgo, Mexico, and grew up in Southern California. A graduate of Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley, Anita began making art while in graduate school. Anita paints on wood and canvas, and also creates altars for el Día de los Muertos, the Mexican Day of the Dead. She lives in San Francisco, California.
"As brightly colored as an Oaxacan carving, this sweet bilingual book pays homage to the flea markets (remates) that Herrera grew up with in California's San Juaquin Valley." —USA Today
"There is a pervasive atmosphere of celebration in the small things of life, as well as a firm grounding in time and place that will reach and touch readers. De Lucio-Brock's primitive illustrations in deep-toned hues enhance the poems perfectly, and help meld all of them into a unified story of a day spent in a place much loved. . . Remateros is an appealing addition to poetry collections." —School Library Journal
"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.’"—Booklist
