"It tasted like a sweet sunrise, tingling inside her mouth."

books:


	• A Gift of Gracias: The Legend of Altagracia Julia Alvarez Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2005 - 40 pages average customer review:based on 3 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

3 1/2 A Brilliant Idea, but Not Enough

"A Gift of Gracias" is a reverent, somewhat religious book about young Maria's dream of a beautiful and luminous figure, Muestra Senora de la Altagracia ("Our Lady of Thanks"), whom Maria dreams about and who subsequently helps her poor family stay on their struggling olive farm. Our Lady of Thanks, wearing a gold crown topped with religious imagery, and a flowing purple-blue cloak over her "golden skin," appears in various guises throughout the story, inspiring and helping the transformation of the farmland into an orange grove. Later, the family patriach, Quisqueya, magically catches an image of Our Lady of Altagracias, and her symbolic presence again unites the family with nature's offerings. When the crop grows so quickly that it threatens to spoil, "Quisqueya hung the picture with the lady's picture from an orange bough," and, by her reflective light, "Maria and her family picked all the oranges that night."

Outwardly, the story has a simple grace to it, yet the author's effort to achieve a sort of religious/magical realism seems patched together and with little context. If one didn't read the author's page-long "About the Story" afterwards, one would never know that the story takes place on an island, the Dominican Republic, that "legend says she (Our Lady of Altagracias) first appeared when the island was still a colony of Spain," or that the figure is indeed the local "image of the Virgin Mary." Perhaps someone thought that omitting these crucial facts from the main story would attract a broader audience, but if you have to wait until an afterward to get the context, there's something almost compromising about the basic stance. It would have been more gratifying and comprehensible if the narrative presented the whole "legend" (their word) of Our Lady of Altagracias, including the historical background, the time and place, and an undiluted and integrated presentation of the religious context.

The pictures are colorful and evocative, mixing splashy iconography with scenes of the countryside. There's also an appealing mix of blended-color backgrounds with flattened foreground perspectives. However, the illustrations don't reveal the family's poverty, or even the fact that this is an island. Again, a more integrated and authentic feeling story might have shown the poor farm conditions that, save the grace of the Virgin, might have forced the family off of their land. Perhaps with adult explanation and discussion supplementing the story and illustrations, some children will find this enjoyable.

for more information click here

Rhymes with orange

Rediscovering an illustrator you loved as a child, even if you never knew their name back in the day, is a treat. Julia Alvarez, of course, is an author who needs no explanation. If you haven't picked up one of her well-known children's books ("Before We Were Free", for example) then the title, "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, In the Time of the Butterflies" is bound to prick up a couple ears here and there. Illustrator Beatriz Vidal, on the other hand, was a mystery to me. In vain I attempted to find her website or Google her so that I could learn more about her as an artist. I had nearly given her up as a newby illustrator when I looked at some of the other books she had done via Amazon. If you are a child of the 80s like myself then the odds are good that "Reading Rainbow" constituted some of your television fare. And if you watched any early episodes then you'll probably recall James Earl Jones reading, "Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain" by Verna Aardema and (dum dum da dum!) illustrated by the one and only Beatriz Vidal. In this way, "A Gift of Gracias" was a welcoming return to an artist I loved especially as a child.

Maria lives in the Dominican Republic with her mother, father, and the old Indian Quisqueya. Her father's olive tree crop has been failing miserably in the Dominican soils and it looks as if the family will have to give up the farming life and move to the city. That night, Maria dreams of a grove of orange trees planted with the blessing of the most beautiful Nuestra Senora de la Altagracia, or Our Lady of Thanks. The oranges her father recently purchased in the big city are reaped of their seeds and planted with thanks. In no time at all they bloom and miraculously yield a crop that would normally take years. When her papa asks her what she would like from the city, Maria responds that all she wants is a portrait of Our Lady of Altagracia. Her father sells every last orange to a profit but no such portrait can he find. Fortunately, Quisqueya is by his side and in the night the man captures the stars in a blanket and presents to Maria a miraculous image when they return back home. In the back of the book is a summary of different names for the Virgin Mary in Mexico, Portugal, and Cuba. Julia Alvarez goes one to mention the history of this tale, the virgin's intervention, and where Quisqueya got his name.

The tale is a lovely one and its even pacing and style reminded me quite a lot of the Caldecott winning picture book, "Song of the Swallows" by Leo Politi. Both books are quiet looks at nature and the rewards that come with faith. In this particular case, Alvarez has told a simple fable that can be embraced by Catholics as well as people of every religion and creed. As she says in her note in the back, "whether you are Dominican or not, Our Lady of Thanks, like Mother Earth, really belongs to all of us". This would make a lovely addition to Earth Day collections without relying on overt messages.

The review of this book from Booklist calls Ms. Vidal's style, "stylized folk-art". I'm not entirely certain that I agree. Certainly her use of illustrations have a flat two-dimensional look to them, but the result are pictures that glow with a soft inner light. "Folk-art" suggests a similar flatness in color, something that does not exist in Ms. Vidal's work. I should think that the cover would be enough to show that. It's not a fancy style, but rather a majestic dignified form of illustration. Just the right complement to Alvarez's particular tale. In the end, I suspect "A Gift of Gracias" will find its biggest customers to be of a religious persuasion. I would equally encourage those of you who just like a nice quiet story to also take a gander at it. Oranges, it seems, have finally gotten their due.

for more information click here

"It tasted like a sweet sunrise, tingling inside her mouth."

Poor harvests in the Dominican Republic have left the country's farmers desperate. Marie's papa is on a trip to market in the city to sell their goods and he has promised to return with a gift for his young daughter. In the morning, the first thing Maria sees, besides her papa sitting at the table, is a basket of golden fruit, "oranges" like those in Valencia, Spain, her parents' homeland. Worried about having to leave the family farm for the city, Maria has a dream, trees bursting out of the ground, heavy with oranges, a beautiful lady with a crown of stars standing in the grove, Nuestra Senora de la Altagracia, Our Lady of Thanks. Because of Maria's dream, her family plants orange seeds on their land, seeds that "sprouted into shoots that grew into trunks that spread into branches filled with oranges that glowed like little suns." The family's income is secured, guided by devotion to Our Lady of Thanks, whose image is the inspiration for this retelling of the Dominican folktale.

In the author's afterward, Alvarez speaks of the legend of the Lady's appearance in the early 1500's, when the island was still a colony of Spain, her saint's day, January 21, a national holiday. In her modern retelling of a beloved tale, the Alvarez illustrates the power of faith and the natural expressions of gratitude, Our Lady at home with the people in the fields under the stars, the orange trees spreading their bounty throughout the land. With its lush illustrations, this charming story brings to life the beliefs of the past as they are still embraced today: "Our Lady of Thanks, like Mother Earth, really belongs to all of us." Luan Gaines/ 2006.

for more information click here

After their olive crop fails, Maria fears that her family will have to abandon their farm on the new island colony. Then, one night she dreams of a mysterious beautiful lady shrouded by trees with branches hung with hundreds of little suns. They are oranges like the ones Maria's parents once ate in their homeland, Valencia, Spain. That very day Maria and her family plant the seeds that soon yield a magnificent orange grove and save the farm. But who was the mysterious lady who appeared in her dream and will Maria ever find her again?