Migrant by josé Manuel Mateo (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Migrant by josé Manuel Mateo Thaddeus Andracki Mateo, José Manuel. Migrant; illus. by Javier Martínez Pedro; tr. from the Spanish by Emmy Smith Ready. Abrams, 2014. 22p ISBN 978-1-4197-0957-9 $17.95 R Gr. 5-8. Recently arrived in Los Angeles, a nameless young narrator recounts the journey of his or her family from their life working on privately owned ejido land in Mexico to hopping a freight train bound for the U.S. and hiding from the “men who looked like the police.” The story of undocumented migration is told in an easygoing but insistent voice, reflecting a child’s-eye view of leaving home for a bewildering new one. The draw here will be the book’s format: a single, black and white, Aztec-inspired ink illustration on amate paper, in an accordion-folded codex. The intricate image unfolds slowly, pulling the reader along from rural fields to the streets of L.A., and makes a breathtaking feast for eyes to carefully examine in full when opened completely. The smallness of the hundreds of individuals in the whole spread effectively conveys the helplessness of children caught in transnational flows, even as the narrator’s strong voice conveys migrant children’s agency, ordinariness, and love of play. Curricular uses here abound: beyond a brief examination of the causes and effects of North American migration (facilitated by a factual authors’ note and perhaps a pairing with Tonatiuh’s Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote, BCCB 7/8/13), this would also be an interesting component to add to an examination of the book as a physical object. [End Page 584] Copyright © 2014 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois