Genre: Los Gatos Black on Halloween (2006) is a lovely example of the Belpre Award winners, a very good book in its own right with a very strong Hispanic influence, both in the art, the content, and the word choices.
Book Summary: The book is a very cute rhyming picture book about Halloween and El Día de los Muertos, drawing on imagery from both such as black cats, the dead rising, witches, and other monsters and spooky things, ending humorously with the monsters being scared away by trick-or-treaters.
Impressions: I am really looking forward to using this one in a couple weeks for my storytime. The art is beautiful, drawing on a variety of styles and influences from Mexico and the US, and very intricate with small details for the children to discover. (My favorite is the vampire trying to fix his hair in a mirror he doesn’t appear in) The rhyming is well done, with Spanish words peppered throughout along with the English equivalent (or near enough) in the same couplet to ease understanding in the readers who aren’t bilingual, and overall it is simply a charming book that will draw the kids in and their parents.
Professional Review: From Publishers Weekly (2017)
Halloween and the Day of the Dead overlap in this atmospheric, bilingual romp. Montes (Juan Bobo Goes to Work) composes serviceable stanzas, using English and Spanish words as synonyms: "Los gatos black with eyes of green,/ Cats slink and creep on Halloween." This dual-language approach can be redundant ("At medianoche midnight strikes..."), yet Morales (Harvesting Hope ) holds readers' attention with surreal, faintly macabre spreads in dim turquoise and clay-brown hues, illuminated by fuschia and flame orange. Witches fly broomsticks like skateboard whizzes, a headstone references Mexican comic Cantinflas and sallow-faced muertos dance until children arrive: "The thing that monsters most abhor/ Are human niños at the door!" Ages 4-8.
Library Uses: Los Gatos Black on Halloween is perfect for the bilingual storytimes I do. It is mostly in English, but with enough Spanish to be educational and interesting, and it even repeats the words used in Spanish in the same couplet in Spanish to help with recognition.
Readalikes: This book would go well with other spooky picture books, both for Halloween and el Día de los Muertos. Some classics like The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything would be a good choice, or other bilingual books like The Day of the Dead / El Día De Lost Muertos, as well as any number of series books with a book about Halloween, such as Clifford’s Halloween.
References
Montes, M. (2006). Los Gatos Black on Halloween. New York, NY: Square Fish.
Publishers Weekly. (2017). Los Gatos Black on Halloween. [Review of the book Los Gatos Black on Halloween]. PWxyz, LLC. Retrieved from https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-8050-7429-1
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