Julia Alvarez has bridged the Americas many times. Born in New York and raised in the Dominican Republic, she is a poet, fiction writer, and essayist, author of world-renowned books in each of the genres, including How the García Girls Lost their Accents, In the Time of the Butterflies, and Something to Declare. She lives on a farmstead outside Middlebury, Vermont, with her husband Bill Eichner. Visit Julia's Web site here to find out more about her writing.
Julia and Bill own an organic coffee farm called Alta Gracia in her native country of the Dominican Republic. Their specialty coffee is grown high in the mountains on what was once depleted pastureland. Not only do they grow coffee at Alta Gracia, but they also work to bring social, environmental, spiritual, and political change for the families who work on their farm. They use the traditional methods of shad-grown coffee farming in order to protect the environment, they pay their farmers a fair and living wage, and they have a school on their farm where children and adults learn to read and write. For more information about Alta Gracia, visit their website.
Belkis Ramírez, who created the woodcuts for A Cafecito Story, is one of the most celebrated artists in the Dominican Republic.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A sweet tale with appealing graphics,
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This review is from: Las Huellas Secretas (Spanish Edition) (Paperback)
I am an American editor/writer married to a Dominican. I became a fan of Julia Alvarez's literary works while taking an English class on immigrant fiction. When I learned that she had written a children's book, Las Huellas Secretas (The Secret Footprints), I was thrilled. I immediately purchased a Spanish version copy to take to my seven-year-old niece in the Dominican Republic.
Alvarez draws from Dominican folklore in her tale of the "ciguapas," a mythological race that lives under the sea and comes to land only at night, after we humans go to sleep. The heroine of the story, Guapa, succumbs to her curiosity about human beings, comes ashore in the daytime, and is discovered by a picnicing family. What she eventually learns is that preconceived notions about those different than us aren't always true--that, sometimes, even those older and wiser than us (in Guapa's case, the Ciguapa queen) harbor prejudices that turn out to be wrong. As for my niece, she loved the friendship theme (between Guapa and a human boy) and the lush, richly colored illustrations. She had fun practicing her reading skills and, although challenged by some of the vocabulary, never got bored. I recommend this book for all Spanish-language children interested in folklore, especially readers of Dominican heritage.
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