We began with our picture book,
Alma and How She Got Her Name by Juana Martinez-Neal. We were generally underwhelmed by this book. Many of us felt the story was 'thin' and didn't really do much as Alma's dad explained to her the origins of her several names and the ancestors that they honored. That was the whole story, which did emphasize the multiple names that may often be given to children in Latino and Spanish cultures. Some of us felt that the book could be put to good use in a classroom to encourage young kids to question their families about the origins of their own names. As for the illustrations. . . also underwhelmed. One reader thought the drawings of Alma made her look like a bee, and we all wondered how/why this book garnered a 2018 Caldecott Honor award.
We had mixed feelings about our novel,
Merci Suarez Changes Gears, the 2018 Newbery Award book by Meg Medina. One reader stated that she would have loved to read a book like this when she was ten, but there were none like it around at the time. Others said they weren't significantly engaged enough to even finish it. Some readers felt that the many incidents described by Merci in her home, her neighborhood, and her school were very disconnected, preventing the story from having a continuous story arc. We pretty much liked the depiction of the relationships in Merci's family, including her closeness with her grandpa, Lolo, and her bewilderment when his behavior changed as he began to show symptoms of Alzheimer's Disease. We understood her anger that no-one in the family would tell her the truth, making her feel very betrayed by them. We agreed that the book was quite accessible for middle-grade readers, who would probably relate to a lot of it, but we all felt that this book, at 368 pages, was just too long -- especially for readers of this age group -- and that it would have benefited by editing out many of the lesser school incidents.
