Bruce Jensen

Masterful bilingual children's books: Xavier Garza comes to town

Xavier Garza came to visit yesterday. His brilliant Lucha Libre: The Man In the Silver Mask (A Bilingual Cuento) was chosen a Best Children’s Book of 2005 by Críticas and it’s a huge favorite, speaking personally, around the choza here.

My friend snuck me in to Rowe High School here in McAllen (he has friends in high places: he's married to RHS librarian Suzan Phillips) where Garza was to speak. We were treated to previews of the writer/illustrator’s two new books, both for release this September. Zulema and the Witch Owl tells the story of the meanest little girl in the world. So mean, Zulema is, that she’s banished from the Girl Scouts for assaulting anyone who doesn’t buy her cookies.

But she meets her match when she is visited one night by the mysterious lechuza, a spooky owl that knows how to straighten up bad little kids. Zulema, like lots of other children along the Mexican border, has heard all the legends of grandmas who can transform into lechuzas. After that night she treats her own abuela--and everyone else--with new respect.

Garza tells the story slyly while showing the art one page at a time. It’ll be a terrific book. He tells the high schoolers that what he does, as with his earlier books Juan and the Chupacabras and Creepy Creatures and Other Cucuys, is write about what he knows: stories that he and the kids have heard over and over again. He urges them to pay attention to those tales: "When we get older, all of a sudden these stories become more important. They become part of who we are."

His other new book also treats a favorite legend, that of Santa Claus’s Mexican cousin. Garza told us before taking the stage that he’s collected and studied the many variants of the "Pancho Claus" tale, but what he wanted was an origin story, one of how the whole thing started. So he cooked up The Legend of Charro Claus and the Tejas Kid (the model for the latter being his little son Vicente). The audience yesterday hooted with delight when they saw his drawings of Charro Claus’s magical flying burros wearing lucha libre masks.

Garza grew up in Rio Grande City, just up the river here, but he has spoken at schools and libraries in many parts of the U.S. The intonation and wit of his delivery make you think of a xicano Michael Moore. He is a writer, an artist (he teaches art in San Antonio schools), and a scholar too: he is at work on a biographical database of the many notable authors from the Rio Grande Valley.

Get Xavier Garza’s wonderful stuff from two of the great independent publishers: Cinco Puntos Press and Arte Público’s Piñata Books imprint. And keep an eye out this September for Zulema and for Charro Claus.

Posted by Bruce Jensen on March 11, 2008 | Comments (0)