Colombian author and educator Irene Vasco and Mexican illustrator Juan Palomino join forces once again (after Letters in Charcoal) to create The Young Teacher and the Great Serpent, an inventive contemporary picture book that extols the value of traditional customs, languages, and art.
The "young teacher" arrives at the Amazonian village of Comunidad Las Delicias after four days of arduous travel. It is a "lovely place on the banks of the river" where "around fifty Indigenous families" live, and the children's school is "nothing more than a straw roof that shelter[s] some chairs." The teacher builds a shelf for her precious books, and proceeds to teach the children in Spanish, though the village adults speak an unnamed language. One morning, the children refuse to attend school: "The great serpent is on its way! It's angry because the colonizers have built all along the riverbank." The teacher doesn't believe in the serpent until she experiences it firsthand: a storm makes the river turn "into a great serpent of mud." The school--books included--is swept away. The despairing teacher is ultimately taught a valuable lesson by the women of the village who, knowing how to deal with the great serpent, have cloth books that preserve their own stories and language.
Lawrence Schimel ably translates Vasco's folkloric text from the Spanish. Palomino's digital illustrations are gloriously detailed with intense greens, deep oranges and browns, and varied yellows. Especially appealing is Palomino's double-page spread of the embroidered pictures made by the women, featuring all manner of creatures. A wonderful read-aloud that serves as a gateway to the world of folklore. --Melinda Greenblatt, freelance book reviewer