Best Children's Book of 1999, Texas Institute of Letters—now available in paper. Grandma Fina is walking through her neighborhood with her wonderful yellow umbrella. She loves her yellow umbrella! She stops to greet everyone she sees. Each one secretly thinks that Grandma Fina's ragged umbrella needs to be replaced with a new one.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz is the author of two novels—Carry Me Like Water and The House of Forgetting, which will be made into a full-length motion picture. He lives in El Paso, Texas.
Gerómimo Garcia is known nationally for his illustrations in A Gift from Papá Diego, by Benjamin Alire Sáenz and Tell Me a Cuento by Joe Hayes. He lives in El Paso, Texas.
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Text: English, Spanish
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From the Author
"Children, no less than adults, need to read books that are about their familiar landscapes. Children need to see a world they recognize in stories, in words, in pictures. I write children's books to make them feel at home in the world of books. I want to tell them, Come home, this is where you live."
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz was born in 1954 in his grandmother's house in Old Picacho, a small farming village in the outskirts of Las Cruces, New Mexico in 1954. He was the fourth of seven children and was raised on a small farm near Mesilla Park. Later, when the family lost the farm, his father went back to his former occupation--being a cement finisher. His mother worked as a cleaning woman and a factory worker. During his youth, he worked at various jobs--painting apartments, roofing houses, picking onions, and working for a janitorial service. He graduated from high school in 1972, and went on to college and became something of a world traveler. He studied philosophy and theology in Europe for four years and spent a summer in Tanzania. He eventually became a writer and professor and moved back to the border--the only place where he feels he truly belongs. He is an associate professor in the MFA creative writing program at the University of Texas at El Paso, the only bilingual creative writing program in the country. Ben Saenz considers himself a fronterizo, a person of the border. He is also a visual artist and has been involved as a political and cultural activist throughout his life. Benjamin Sáenz is a novelist, poet, essayist and writer of children's books. His young adult novel Sammy & Juliana in Hollywood was selected as one of the Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults in 2005, and his prize-winning bilingual picture books for children--A Gift from Papá Diego and Grandma Fina and Her Wonderful Umbrellas--have been best-selling titles. A Perfect Season for Dreaming is Ben's newest bilingual children's book which has received two starred reviews, one from Publishers Weekly and one from Kirkus Reviews. He has received the Wallace Stegner Fellowship, the Lannan Fellowship and an American Book Award. His first book of poems, Calendar of Dust, won an American Book Award in 1992. That same year, he published his first collection of short stories, Flowers for the Broken. In 1995, he published his first novel, Carry Me Like Water (Hyperion), and that same year, he published his second book of poems, Dark and Perfect Angels. Both books were awarded a Southwest Book Award by the Border Area Librarians Association. In 1997, HarperCollins published his second novel, The House of Forgetting. Ben is a prolific writer whose more recent titles include In Perfect Light (Rayo/Harper Collins), Names on a Map (Rayo/Harper Collins), He Forgot to Say Goodbye (Simon and Schuster), and two books of poetry Elegies in Blue (Cinco Puntos Press), and Dreaming the End of War (Copper Canyon Press).
For the second time, noted Mexican-American novelist and poet Saenz turns his hand to the picture book. Grandma Fina likes to walk through her neighborhood carrying her old umbrella [or parasol, if you prefer] to keep her cool during the hot days. As she greets her friends and relatives on her walk, they all notice how tattered the umbrella is, and each decides-- individually-- to give her a new one for her birthday. And so she receives 9 new umbrellas, which she cheerfully shares with her friends at the retirement center. The repetitive nature of her greetings and the thoughts of her neighbors about her umbrella will please young readers or listeners, who will be able to predict what will happen next or even to join in with the conversation. The illustrations are bright and cheery. Spanish phrases are worked seamlessly into the English text [just as Spanish and English flow together in the American Southwest], and a complete Spanish version of the story is provided as well-- the English is printed in black, the Spanish in green. Charming and sweet, "Grandma Fina" is sure to please.
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This review is from: Grandma Fina and Her Wonderful Umbrellas: La Abuelita Fina y sus sombrillas maravillosas (English and Spanish Edition) (Paperback)
I bought this book for two reasons; my grandduaghter is half Mexican and I had read In Perfect Light as well as other of Saenz's books and admired his writing. That admiration extends to this children's book. My granddaughter loves the story and the pictures as do I.
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