Come meet La Familia calaca! They're just like everybody else. Except they're all bones!
Welcome to the family! It's just like yours: father, mother, sister, brother, abuelita, gato, even a great-great grandmother. Well, but there's something just a little bit different about this particular family. Maybe it's those clothes they wear... just a little bit fashion backward. And the colors! So vibrant and... lively. Maybe that's what it is. They are just so full of life while looking almost other worldly.
Cynthia Weill's bilingual collaboration with artist Jesus Canseco Zarate teaches young readers basic information about relationships, while also celebrating the colorful tradition of Mexico's Day of the Dead. Canseco Zarate long-limbed sculptures are a playful twist on traditional Mexican iconography of the skeleton that stretches back through the country's art history to Jose Guadalupe Posada's engravings and Aztec sculpture.
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¡Bienvenidos a la familia! Es justo como la tuya: papa, mama, hermana, hermano, abuelita, gato, hasta un a vis-abuela. Pero hay algo un poco diferente sobre esta familia. Tal vez es la su ropa... es un poco anticuada. Y los colores! Tan vibrantes y... vivos. Tal vez eso es, solo estan llenos de vida, al mismo tiempo pareciendo de otro mundo.
La colaboracion bilingue entre autora Cynthia Weill y artista Jesus Canseco Zarate le ensena a lectores jovenes informacion basica sobre familias, al mismo tiempo celebrando la tradicion colorida del Dia de Muertos. Las esculturas de brazos largos de Canseco Zarate le dan un toque jugueton a la iconografia Mexicana tradicional del esqueleto, que se ve a lo largo de la historia artistica del pais, hasta los grabados de Jose Guadalupe Posada, y las esculturas Aztecas.
