Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Mexican Myths and Stories as Children's Literature

1987; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 15; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/chl.0.0324

1543-3374

Allan Burns,

Literacy and Educational Practices

Mexican Myths and Stories as Children's Literature Allan F. Burns (bio) Tigers and Opossums: Animal Legends, adapted and illustrated by Marcos Kurtycz and Ana García Kobeh. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1984. Why Corn Is Golden: Stories about Plants, adapted by Vivien Blackmore. Illustrated by Susana Martínez-Ostos. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1984. The Old Lady Who Ate People: Frightening Stories, adapted by Francisco Hinojosa. Illustrated by Lionel Maciel. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1984. My Song Is a Piece of Jade: Poems of Ancient Mexico in English and Spanish, adapted by Toni de Gerez. Illustrated by William Stark. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1984. Spirit Child: A Story of the Nativity, translated from the Aztec by John Bierhorst, pictures by Barbara Cooney. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1984. The Legend of Food Mountain/La Montaña del Alimento, adapted by Harriet Rohmer. Illustrated by Graciela Carillo. Translated into Spanish by Alma Flor Ada and Rosalma Zubizarreta. San Francisco: Children's Book Press, 1982. Mexico is blessed with a vigorous mix of native Indian and Spanish traditions, a syncretism which has resulted in a truly New World art and literature. Mexico's many different ways of speaking, of representing images, and of telling stories are captured in this collection of recently published books for children that are drawn from the rich folk traditions and myths of Mexican life. All these books carry over into English (and in some cases into bilingual English and Spanish), the meaning, feeling, and spirit of Mexican folklore and Mexican life, so much so that it is sometimes difficult to remember later whether one has read them in English, Spanish, or perhaps Chontol Mayan. Each of the four books published by Little, Brown (Tigers, Why [End Page 179] Corn Is Golden, The Old Lady, and My Song) explores a different theme or genre of Mexican folklore, from soaring prayers to trickster tales. Spirit Child is a poetic transformation of the nativity story that Spanish priests presented to indigenous people in Mexico at the time of the conquest. The present volume is the first English translation of that work, a work that was included in Fray Bernardino de Sahagún's Psalmodia Christiana, the first book to be published in the New World in 1583. The Legend of Food Mountain—a mythic "pourquoi" tale—has been adapted into English and then retranslated back into Spanish so as to be presented as a bilingual text. Why Corn Is Golden: Stories about Plants by Blackmore and Martínez-Ostos is a companion and a complement to Tigers and Opossums: Animal Legends and the simplest of the collections. The stories are all very short, almost anecdotes, fables, or parables. Some are more about people than they are about plants: my favorite is a two-page story titled "Chiapaneco" (the person from the state of Chiapas). The story talks about a mysterious beggar who might come to one's door, perhaps to ask for food or lodging. If people help him out, their crops do well; if not, their houses blow apart and their crops fail. The story ends with a quick reference to the present by asking the question, "Is someone knocking at your door? You never know—it might be Chiapaneco!" More sophisticated use of fantasy themes makes The Old Lady Who Ate People perhaps the most unusual and exciting of the books in the Little, Brown series. Each story in this collection portrays part of a magical world that includes characters who can move between the realms of the living and the dead; but this world is without the attendant celebration of horror exemplified by such modern writers as Stephen King. Instead, humor plays through most of the stories. We meet, for instance, the "Wise Woman," a character who is especially adept at outwitting people. In another story, we laugh over the surprise of nuns in a convent who hear an extra, unaccounted-for voice in the choir; and, finally, we can't help but chortle over how a hungry witch gets her just deserts when she tries to eat a person made of stone. One distinctive focus of Mexican folklore is the...