This beautiful, heartwarming
picture begins: “My papi has a motorcycle. From him I’ve learned words like
carburetor and cariño, drill and dedication.”
It’s a celebration of
working-class, Latinx fathers that’s based on the author’s own memories of her
father giving her motorcycle rides around Corona, California. In the story, a
young girl proudly wearing her unicorn helmet sees their librarian walking by,
her grandparents’ house, her father’s current worksite, and a raspado (shaved
ice) shop that has closed since their last visit.
The story itself is a trip down
memory lane, showing local businesses that existed in Quintero’s childhood.
It’s also a trip down Grand Boulevard, a circular street in Corona that was the
site of several international car races in the 1910s. As the girl and her
father zoom along, she imagines being in one of those car races. As readers, we
see the history of this city woven with the history of its Latinx community.
I’ve had this book go over great in
elementary-age storytime. I showed the girl’s motorcycle helmet to the kids and
asked what they would have on their own motorcycle helmet. They all knew
immediately! When the girl and her dad reached the closed down raspados shop, I
asked them what flavor raspados they would like to have. They yelled out fruit
flavors I knew, plus a new one on me: tiger’s blood. This turned out to be
watermelon, strawberry, and coconut. They were mesmerized by the imagined car
racing scenes and the motorcycle streaking down the road like a blue lightning
bolt. So long as the storytime leader understands the Spanish words and
phrases, kids don’t need everything defined to follow the story. When I did
pause a few times to ask if anyone knew what raspados, or albóndigas, or
conchas are, the kids who had food-related vocabulary were thrilled to be the
experts who could explain to the others about snow cones, meatballs, and sweet
bread.
For another picture book
celebrating awesome dads who are often overlooked in this format, I suggest
Tell Me a Tattoo Story by Alison McGhee. I also suggest the award-winning Lowriders
series of graphic novels by Cathy Camper because the girl in this story is
shown reading them and they have strong Latinx and vehicle culture ties back to
‘My Papi Has a Motorcycle.’
This title is also available in
Spanish at Lincoln City Libraries as ‘Mi Papi Tiene Una Moto.’
Have you read this one? What
did you think? Did you find this review helpful?
New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!
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