El gran día de Lily. (Lilly’s Big Day)

Reviewed by Ann Welton, Grant Center for the Expressive Arts, Tacoma, WA -- Críticas, 4/15/2008

Henkes, Kevin.
tr. by María Candelaria Posada. illus. by author. U.S.: Greenwillow & Rayo: HarperCollins. 2008. unpaged. ISBN 978-0-06-136316-0. $16.99.

K-Gr 3–When her teacher, Mr. Slinger, announces that he is getting married, Lily is certain that she will be the flower girl. She begins to practice at once—walking slowly across her room, looking from side to side with a brilliant smile, singing the wedding march. Her parents try to warn her that Mr. Slinger may have a little niece who deserves the job. But Lily is convinced that this wedding will be the best day of her life. Her distress is palpable when her teacher tells her that he does indeed have a niece, Ginger, who will, in fact, be the flower girl. Just how Lily both saves the wedding march and gets her dream to come true makes for a deeply humorous and satisfying story. The translation sparkles, catching both the spirit and inflection of the English original; and Lily’s highly individual personality comes through undiluted. A must-have for any collection serving a young Hispanic population, this volume continues the publisher’s immense success in producing high-quality translations.