Catch Lucia The Luchadora Depicted By Cynthia Leonor Garza Presented As File

is a luchadora. She doesn't get any respect! But one day she goes down the scary slide to rescue a dog, What a hero! But a luchador once revealed is no longer a luchador, . . or is she

What a cute book! Ozman enjoyed it, and it was a pretty fun read, I'm glad to see there is and book, we'll have to see if the library has it, Lucia zips through the playground in her cape just like the boys, but when they tell her "girls can't be superheroes," suddenly she doesn't feel so mighty, That's when her beloved abuela reveals a dazzling secret: Lucia comes from a family of luchadoras, the bold and valiant women of the Mexican lucha libre tradition, Cloaked in a flashy new disguise, Lucia returns as a recess sensation! But when she's confronted with a case of injustice, Lucia must decide if she can stay true to the ways of the luchadora and fight for what is right, even if it means breaking the sacred rule of never revealing the identity behind her mask.
Lucía the Luchadora is the powerhouse debut picture book of author Cynthia Leonor Garza, and illustrator Alyssa Bermudez, It reinforces that girls can equal and surpass boys in sport, encourages compassion and helping others, all while being a heaping ton of fun,

She enters the playground with a "Pow," and a "Bam," but the boys tell Lucia that girls can't be superheroes, Lucía tells her Abuela about her problem and learns a secret, her Abuela used to be a special kind of superhero, a luchadora, Lucía is given her Abuela's mask and cape and when she wears them to school, other kids start to wear capes and masks too, When an emergency arises at school Lucía is the one to swoop into action and save the day, proving that girls can be superheroes,

The text is splatted and swirled onto the pages in unexpected places in rainbow colors, The illustrations are fresh, expressive, and bold with plenty of details for young eyes to dive into on every page, Besides the great look and message Lucía the Luchadora can be used by educators as an example of onomatopoeia, From the eye catching cover, to the beautiful end papers, to all of the pages in between, this book wins,

My .ofstars
Very colorful story for anyone who is tired of hearing "Girls can't be super heroes, " Rating:.leaves out of
Characters:/
Cover:/
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Genre: Children/ Picture book
Type: Book
Worth: Yes

The words were hard to read over the pictures but other than that it was a good book! Boys can be dumb.
Oh Man! the masks, the capes KAPOW! Little Chap loved this one so much from the Library, he got a copy of his own for Christmas, This book is a wonderful story about a plucky young lady who embodies the elements of her culture to become her own hero, The illustrations by Alyssa Bermudez make reading the story even more fun and interactive, So wonderful for kids, especially kids who need a little help feeling brave, LOVE THIS. It was probably seven or so years ago, I was working as a childrens librarian in New York City, We were hosting a class of kids, first or second graders, and after I had read them some picture books and covered the rudimentary basics on how to treat the titles they checked out, we let them run free to find whatever subjects they wanted.
As I returned to the front desk about four or five of them trailed me, I sat down and they said, voices bright with hope and anticipation, “Where are your Mexican wrestling books” And I had nothing for them, Absolutely nothing. Sure, we had a section on wrestling but it was all WWF stuff, No DK compendiums of the greatest Mexican wrestlers, No biographies of the most famous ones, Not even a single solitary picture book, A couple years passed and Yuyi Morales wrote two picture books that involved wrestling sitelinkNino Wrestles the World and sitelinkRudas while a couple other middle grade novels and additional picture books were released.
Still, I felt like I was waiting for something, A book that years later I could pretend I could at last hand over to those kids, And then, this year, I saw Lucia the Luchadora and something in me broke wide open, Cleverly equating luchadoras with superheroes while tackling issues of sexism and cultural assumptions head on, this is the book that gave myyearold daughter the idea to create her own luchadora outfits in fine and fancy style.
Literally inspirational.

Lucia is a little down, She was having a lot of fun running around the playground acting like a superhero, but when she tried to play with the twins Mick and Nick they just told her that girls cant be superheroes at all.
Seeing her granddaughter sad, Lucias abuela lets her in on a little family secret, Squirreled away in a old box lies a shiny satin cape and a special silver mask, Long ago, Abu was a luchadora, a Mexican wrestler in the vein of the great luchador El Santo, who was never unmasked, Inspired, Lucia wears the mask and cape to the playground and everyone not only stands in awe of her but they too start constructing luchador and luchadora costumes of their own.
Yet it isnt until Lucia sees another girl teased by Nick and Mick that she discovers that sometimes the greatest thing a hero can do is simply to be seen for who she truly is.
A note about the history of luchadores and luchadoras follows at the end of the book,

Equating luchadoras and superheroes isnt a new idea in general, but its fair to say Ive never seen it done in a picture book before, Whats odd is that its so obvious you can't help but remain baffled as to why this is the first time its been done, Of course, its not as if the North American market is positively overflowing with LatinoAmerican picture books, In spite of the existence of the Pura Belpre Awards for Latino/Latina writers and illustrators, a study conducted by the CCBC infound that only,of picture books published contained characters with Latinx backgrounds, Garzas choice to make the book culturally appropriate AND massively appealing in its subject matter is remarkable, We hear a lot about kids needing more diverse books and this is very true, But we additionally need more fun diverse books, and “Lucia” fits that need perfectly,

Briefly putting aside the cultural ramifications of Garza and Bermudezs book, lets also consider it this way: This is the only female superhero picture book Ive ever seen that didnt involve a trademarked character.
By the way, I just wrote that sentence and then went on a mad Googling spree to see if what I said rings true, Its not completely right. The sitelink Ladybug Girl books by Jaqueline Davis and David Soman, for example, are technically about a girl pretending to be a superhero, And certainly there are female superhero side characters in books like sitelink Kapow by George OConnor, But Ladybug Girl, for all her charms, is very soft and lowkey, The thrill of Lucia is that shes leaping off of monkey bars and outrunning her enemies, My daughter, a bit of a Superfriends addict circahas always considered Ladybug Girl perfectly acceptable, if not half as energized and exciting as Lucia the Luchadora.
This is a book that positively sizzles on the page,

Much of the credit of this sizzling action goes to Ms, Garza, author extraordinaire. Right from the start shes acting on some pretty classic comic book tropes, Onomatopoetic words appear beside Lucia as she goes “POW” and “BAM” like a classy episode of the classic Batman and Robin television show from thes, Thats how the book opens, and I can attest to the fact that there are few things that rivet the attention of child readers faster than kids their age in familiar spaces in this case, the playground acting like super heroic action heroes.
Of course cool settings only take you so far, Lucias true journey begins when the boys refuse to involve her in their games, Garza keeps their nasty comments lowkey the mocking rhyme of girls being “sugar and spice and everything nice” plays a hand but you get why Lucias glum, The story arc was important to me at this point, Should anyone ask you, writing a concise, smart picture book is ridiculously hard, You have to pack a big punch into a small space, and basically create conflict, likeable characters, a moral for young readers optional, a climax, and a conclusion all within aboutpages or so.
When it turned out that Lucias true heroic act wouldnt be rescuing a puppy from a twisty slide but removing her mask to show solidarity with another girl, I felt like this was a moment of true empathy that child readers would actually understand.
Hellooooooo, teachable moment!

Ms, Garzas text is great and Im sure it would get some attention regardless of the illustrator, That said, she lucked out here, Authors dont typically get to pick the artists that work on their books, Thats the final call of the books editor, and in this case the editor somehow learned of Alyssa Bermudez, Lucia the Luchadora is Ms, Bermudezs debut picture book Garzas too, for that matter and a perusal of her online portfolio reveals colors, patterns, and images that gleefully rejoice in overkill, This isnt an illustrator afraid of busy art, With Lucia, Bermudez takes Garzas text to heart and doesnt just give the sound effects their own oversized letters but also adds an explosion of white in the background behind the characters too.
Then theres her attention to detail, Whether its the rosary beads and perfume on the grandmothers dressing table or the fact that Abus green eyes match the eyes of the luchadora of her memories, theres a talent at work here.
This being Ms. Bermudezs first time around the block, I did find a couple small details that distracted from the story, Lucias leap from the monkey bars always appears to be headfirst, which makes her landing on her feet just a bit unlikely, Also, the dark swirly slide that everyone on the playground appears to fear would make a lot more sense if it were enclosed, Out in the open its just a slide, albeit a rather lovely dark red/purple one,

Now please excuse me but Im gonna go off on the killer typography here for a second, I dont know why, but the older I get, the more I pay attention to fonts in picture books, I never notice their colors when Im reading a book to my kids, but when I go back and examine it, I sometimes notice that the change in the color of a font actually affects how I read the book aloud to my child.
In this book the first words are “I zip through the playground in my red cape,” in red, After that the words are in blue and white, then red again, Some of these color choices are made out of necessity white against the dark backgrounds and dark against the light but considering how often they change you might think it would be distracting to the reader.
It isnt. It just feels natural to the text, Better than natural, it feels necessary,

And did I mention the endpapers Boy, you know I like a book when I start waxing eloquent on endpapers, The first ones you see display testimonial images to both Lucias abuelas life wedding photos, pictures of her cat, icons of Mary, lighted candles and her loves El Santo, her luchadora mask, etc.
. Even better, when you turn that first page to look at the title page, the

backside of the endpaper is now a repeating pattern of wrestling images done in blue ink.
This becomes the pattern on the top of Lucias mask on the back endpapers, Who pays attention to that kind of detail! Class acts, Thats who.

Books for kids on Mexican wrestlers still have a long ways to go, Honestly, until I see a DK or Eyewitness or National Geographic Press title summarizing the greatest wrestlers of the past and present for kids in a clear format, Ill continue to remember those kids in the library and their innocent request.
Childrens librarians are hemmed in by the constraints of the publishing industry, If they dont make 'em, we cant buy 'em, Thats why a book like Lucia the Luchadora is so important, Funny, exciting, and truly beautiful, this book is good for what ails you, Kids will eat it up with a spoon but beware, After reading this book they may want to know even MORE about luchadores and luchadoras, You better get ready to answer their questions, I suggest you bone up on your reading now, Start with this book. You hardly find one better,

For ages. .