Customer Reviews

The Twenty-Five Mixtec Cats

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3 star:		(1)
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I love this book, and so does my seven-year-old daughter. We lived for three months in Mexico and a month in Central America's Mayan regions (Belize/the Yucatan), and this book is pretty accurate in telling a story from the Mixtec culture. I would not read it to a child younger than seven, because it does have scary characters, and there is a major misunderstanding in the book because of people's fear and ignorance. But for a child seven or older, it is a wonderful cultural story, and the themes are appropriate for conversations about ignorance, fear, culture-clashes, magic, religion, and the role of pets as helpers (or familiars, if you are Pagan).

I should say that we read Rosita Arviga's book, _Sastun_, out loud as a family while we were in Belize, and my daughter liked that book too. It is not a childrens' book; it is an adult book about a woman's 25-year apprenticeship with a Mayan shaman. _The Twenty-Five Mixtec Cats_ makes a lot more sense if you have read _Sastun_.

the book is beautiful and the illustrations are, too, but the story isn't really a kids story, it's too long, dark and complicated and it's not the kind of thing that I could read to a kid.