Grandma and Me at the Flea / Los Meros Meros Remateros (English and Spanish Edition) - Softcover

Juan Felipe Herrera

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0892392797 ISBN 13: 9780892392797

Publisher: Lee & Low Books, 2013

Synopsis

Every Sunday Juanito helps his grandmother sell old clothes beneth the rainbow-colored tents at the remate, the flea market. There, Juanito and his friends romp from booth to booth, fulfilling Grandma's vision of the remate as a sharing community of friendly give-and-take.Juanito gallops to the jewelry-man, who gives Juanito a copper bracelet and a watch for Grandma in exchange for her help sending money orders home to Mexico. Señora Vela gratefully accepts a bundle of Grandma's healing herbs in return for sacks of ruby red chiles. With every exchange Juanito learns firsthand what it means to be a true rematero - a fleamarketeer - and understands that the value of community can never be measured in dollars.

About this title

Language Notes:

Text: English, Spanish

From Booklist:

Ages 4-8. Juanito doesn't mind getting up at five o'clock on Sunday mornings. That's when he and Grandma Esperanza drive to the open-air flea market where, over the years, they have sold wares, and Esperanza has guided and translated for new immigrants and offered recipes, poems, comfort, and massages to tired workers. As Juanito runs happily through the stalls with his friends, the vendors repay Esperanza's kindnesses with gifts of their own--belts, fruit, jewelry, blankets--which Juanito offers to Esperanza at the story's end. The overt messages about giving, receiving, and reuse (there's no money exchanged) are balanced by the lyrical bilingual text (both languages on each spread) that celebrates the energy and warmth of the "soft city of tents and woolly walls." The parrot-colored paintings are somewhat amateurish in their rendering of people, but their folk-art details--the smiling suns and vibrantly patterned blankets--add appeal. A sunny glimpse of a Hispanic community. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Lee & Low Books
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0892392797
• ISBN 13: 9780892392797
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Anita De Lucio-Brock