New Releases by Pat Mora

Mora''s insights on bilingualism, education, women, and family are sometimes barbed and always exact.

A poetic depiction of the desert as the provider of comfort, food, spirit, and life.

After the visitors have left the zoo and the animals have settled down for the night, a mischievous monkey starts a ting-tong rhythm on the marimba and slowly the animals awaken. Lions and llamas samba and cougars and coyotes conga as all the animals join in the fun to create a rollicking fiesta. Infused with Mexican American flavor, ?MARIMBA! is a unique alphabet book that also introduces the concept of cognates--words in different languages that are similar. Young Spanish speakers will be delighted to find they are already familiar with twenty-six words in English, and English speakers with find they already know some Spanish. Author''s note, pronunciation guide, rebus dictionary.

With lilting verse and playful imagery, this award-winning author celebrates the tender relationship between the beloved saint and the animals whom he adored.

Doña Flor, a giant lady with a big heart, sets off to protect her neighbors from what they think is a dangerous animal, but soon discovers the tiny secret behind the huge noise.

Stella loves her family and her Mexican heritage, but she doesn''t always like being different from the other kids at school. Now her class is going to dance around the Maypole at the school''s May parade, and Stella wants her tulip costume to be special, even if she won''t look like the other girls at school. Sometimes being different can be exciting. This touching story that celebrates diversity is based on author Pat Mora''s mother''s childhood and is brought to life by Elizabeth Sayles''s evocative paintings. Illustrated by Elizabeth Sayles.

With the help and interference of her cat Chica, Cecilia prepares a surprise gift for her great-aunt''s ninetieth birthday.

A biography of the seventeenth-century Mexican poet, learned in many subjects, who became a nun later in life.

Illustrated with wonderfully ingenuous paintings of scenes of Santa Fe in the early part of the twentieth century, this picture book''s story of a girl becoming an artist is based on childhood memories. Maria draws the world around her--chile vendors, the feast of San Isidro, preparing for the fiesta, flying kites, and picking herbs--to entertain herself and her mother. When her mother gives her a set of paints, it is the dawning of Maria''s creative self as she paints the hills around her beloved town.

More than sixty poems, some with Spanish translations, include such titles as "The Young Sor Juana", "Graduation Morning", "Border Town 1938", "Legal Alien", "Abuelita Magic", and "In the Blood".

Like Sonia Sanchez and Sandra Cisneros, Pat Mora draws on oral and lyrical traditions; she reclaims the history and culture of her Mexican roots, especially real and imagined Mexican women of the past, from a tribute to Frida Kahlo to an interview with an Aztec goddess.

With the help of her mischievous cat, Cecilia finds the perfect birthday present for her Tía. Today is Tía''s birthday! Cecilia wants to surprise her great-aunt with a very special present. But what could it be? Could it be Tía’s favorite mixing bowl that she and Cecilia used to make delicious bizcochos? Could it be a ball like the one Tía played with as a little girl in Mexico? With the help of her cat, Chica, Cecilia plants the perfect surprise. And Tía has a very special surprise for Cecilia, too!

From a tribute to Frida Kahlo to advice from an Aztec goddess, award-winning Chicana poet Pat Mora explores the intimate and sacred spaces of the borderlands. "Ms. Mora''s poems are poudly bilingual, an eloquent answer to purists who refuse to see language as something that lives and changes".

Ray, Lisa, and Rita find an injured dove and take it to their grandmother, who cares for the bird until it can fly again.

An illustrated collection of poems for children that celebrates the beauty of the American southwest.

"A rhyming text weaves together numbers from one to ten in English and Spanish as two sisters gather presents for their mama''s birthday from a Mexican market."--ALA "Booklist." Full color.

Pictures depict two sisters going from shop to shop buying birthday presents for their mother. Rhyming text presents numbers from one to ten in English and Spanish.

Each year on his birthday, a young Mexican American boy looks forward to seeing how his grandfather has decorated the tree he planted on the day the boy was adopted.

El Paso, the pass to the north, lies between vast stretches of desert. This is a geographic accident. Yet like everywhere, people live, love, marry, grow old and die. They also rejoice and despair. These poems relate all these experiences ? but in the magical presence, the telluric force, of the desert. Two women poets sing here, one in the guise of the desert, the other in the figure of Pat Mora. Together they intone Chants. The desertÍs beauty is perceived in subtle gradations of color and texture, in stark contrasts between light and darkness. It speaks as a magical force, as a lonely woman and, for our patience, offers flowers. Like the desert, Pat Mora speaks with muted tones, weaves incantations; she invests her poetic space with magical figures, yet from her loneliness come as well fear, resentment and despair. But she learns the peaceful solitude of the desert. From their dialogue, words become blossoms, fragile in desert rhythms..

A bilingual poem which describes some of the sounds of nature in a desert.

With the help and interference of her cat Chica, Cecilia prepares a surprise gift for her great-aunt''s ninetieth birthday.