If there’s anything that Güero can’t handle, he can rely on his new fregona girlfriend, Johanna, to jump in. In authentic sneak-dissing (or “come-and-get-me”) rap, for instance, Güero stands his ground by lobbing taunts back at classroom bullies like Snake Barrero (who has just slammed him into a locker and called him “güero cacahuatero” and “gringo nerd”): Güero’s own poetic styles include free verse, and rhymed and unrhymed couplets, tercets, quatrains and quintets as well as sonnets, haiku, senru, and rap. It is from her that Güero comes to know that “poetry is the clearest lens for viewing the world.” Wong, keeps a long-eared white rabbit in her room and talks about the Moon Rabbit in Korea and Mexico, gifts her class Aztec and Mayan and Chinese and Korean legends, and plants seeds in the lives of her young charges. In school, Güero’s woke English teacher, Mrs. And it’s appropriate that the glossary does not distinguish between language types, which readers will be able to infer from context.

It’s especially refreshing that there is no italicization of anything: the languages and word-images blend with an authenticity rarely seen in middle-grade stories. He communicates in Spanish and English with his elder relatives (especially with his bisabuela, who enjoys instructing him traditionally through dichos), mostly English with his teachers and friends (“los Bobbys”), Spanish first with new arrivals, and an effortless combination of English, Spanish, Espanglish and code-switching with everyone else, including family and readers. He is “puro mexicano.”Īs a child of dual cultures who has learned to float between different groups, Güero uses variations of language to express himself.

Observant readers looking back to Zeke Peña’s digitally rendered cover art will notice that, as Güero and his dog run through the chaparral, the boy’s freckles and hair-along with the Huehuehcoyotl (“Feathered Coyote”) Nahual mask he wears-perfectly match the cinnamon-colored sand. Like his idol, the great Mexican boxer, Saul “Canelo” Álvarez, the boy whom everyone calls “Güero” is cinnamon-toned, too. And he’s learning what he’s been given to do. Here, our super-smart protagonist and poet clearly knows who he is and what he comes from. Memories from the author’s own childhood experiences-as well as those of his son, his friends, and the young men he worked with as a middle-school teacher-inform this too-slim book of poetry from the perspective of a 12-year-old Chicano border kid entering the seventh grade. Review Source: De Colores: The Raza Experience in Books for Children

They call me guero read aloud