Dona Flor

Mora, Pat. 2005. Dona Flor. Ill. by Raul Colon. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-375-82337-9.

Dona Flor is an original Latina character in the vein of traditional tall-tale heroes like Pecos Bill or Paul Bunyan. She's so tall that she can dig a riverbed with her thumb, hug the wind, and grab snow off a mountaintop to wash her face. When a puma is frightening the people and animals in her village, it's up to Dona Flor to do something. But because the puma is tricky and because Dona Flor has such a big heart, the solution isn't what readers might first expect.

Colon's illustrations in muted blues, yellows, and browns are a perfect match for this story, which seems like it could have come from a book today's great-grandparents enjoyed when they were children. The people in the illustrations are wearing what look like clothes from the 1800s - trousers and hats for the men, long skirts and rebozos for the women. The village buildings are adobe, and the landscape of mountains and mesas looks like it could be in New Mexico.

Although I loved the illustrations and the idea of the story, the story itself leaves something to be desired. Mora seems to be divided between telling the story of the puma hunt and just listing things that Dona Flor can do because she's so big. The effect is to make Dona Flor sound like she's not very bright, as she keeps stopping in her search for the puma that everyone is so scared of to do other things that don't seem to be nearly as important. Then she goes back to the search when she hears the puma again, as if she's forgotten all about it until it roars.

Even so, the story is heartwarming, the ending is a nice suprise, and Dona Flor is just as captivating a character as those in traditional tall tales.

There is no glossary for the interlingual Spanish words, but they are mostly either clear from context or repeated in English. The only other cultural markers are the building and clothing style and Dona Flor's tortillas. Its not clear whether all the villagers are Latino/a or whether some of them are Caucasians who speak Spanish. (And the animal characters aren't either one, although they speak Spanish too!)

In Booklist, Gillian Engberg says, "Mora strengthens her economical, poetic text with vivid, fanciful touches: the villagers use Flor's colossal homemade tortillas as roofs, for example. Colon's signature scratchboard art extends the whimsy and gentle humor in lovely scenes of the serene heroine sweet-talking the animals or plucking a star from the sky. A winning read-aloud, particularly for children who can recognize the intermittent Spanish phrases."

I do think this book would be fun to read out loud. If kids didn't recognize the Spanish, they could practice guessing the words from context. It would also be neat to use this book in a Spanish lesson, gradually replacing the English words with more and more Spanish words and retelling the story.

Engberg, Gillian. Booklist. Qtd. in Amazon.com. http://www.amazon.com/Dona-Flor-Belpre-Illustrator-Awards/dp/0375823379/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-1796065-2716726?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1183140911&sr=1-1.