DAYS OF THE DEAD: A Guide for Readers & Educators

Best Users: Librarians, Booksellers, Classroom Teachers, Home Learning
Best Audience: Children Grades 04-08

 

ABOUT THE GUIDE

“Timely in its treatment of immigration injustices, and timeless in the exploration of the enduring spiritual and cultural traditions of the author’s beloved home. An engaging story of strength, love, and redemption, complete with dazzling touches of laugh-out-loud humor.”
—Laura Resau, author of Estrella en el bosque

The Days of the Dead: A Guide for Readers and Educators offers resource links on Immigration, Biracial Identity, and Mexican American culture and history including Día de los Muertos.
The guide also includes:

– Glossary of Terms & Other Notes
– Discussion, Extensions & Writing Opportunities by Chapter
– Overall Discussion, Extensions & Writing Opportunities

The guide was written by Jennifer Ziegler, a writer and editor who has penned more than twenty novels for teens and tweens. She is very proud of her Hispanic heritage and years as a middle school English teacher. Jennifer currently lives in Austin, Texas, with her family. Glossary provided by author Kersten Hamilton and Teaching Resources by Curious City.

Guide for Reader & Educators
DOWNLOAD Days of the Dead: A Guide for Readers & Educators (PDF)

 

ABOUT THE BOOK

Days of the Dead
By Kersten Hamilton
Published by Sky Pony Press
ISBN-13: 9781510728585
Age Range: 8 – 12 Years

By the critically acclaimed author of Tyger Tyger, a warm, magical story of a girl’s struggle to keep a promise to her dead mother.

Glorieta Magdalena Davis Espinosa is happy that Papi married Alice. She’s happy that he can smile again after years of mourning Mamá. But the urn containing Mamá’s ashes disappeared into a drawer the day Alice moved in.

If everything about Glorieta’s life is going to change, then she wants one thing to go her way: She wants to hear stories about her mamá when the family gathers on the last night of los Días de los Muertos. And that can only happen if Tia Diosonita will allow Mamá to be buried with the Espinosas in holy ground. If she will allow people to speak Mamá’s name.

With the help of her best friend, River, and her cousin Mateo, Glorieta sets out to convince Diosonita that Mamá is not burning in Hell. To do so, she’ll have to learn to let hate go—and to love the people who stand in her way.

In prose that sparkles with magical undertones, author Kersten Hamilton weaves a tender story about grief, faith, and the redemptive power of love.

“Kersten Hamilton is a wonderful, dynamic writer. Glorieta’s courage and faithful search for goodness will make your heart glow a little brighter.”
—Francisco X. Stork, author of Disappeared
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“A blended family learns to cope and have compassion for each other. Mexican-American Glorieta Magdalena Davis Espinosa takes her obligations to her family very seriously. Her mother’s family, the Espinosas, has lived in the same house for 400 years, and her aunts are the matriarchs of the town of Puerto de la Luna, which was swallowed up by Epoch, New Mexico, when it became a part of the United States but kept much of its magic and Mexicanness. But no magic can soothe Glorieta’s grief over losing her mother to suicide years ago. Her great-aunt, la Doña Diosonita, forbade a burial in consecrated ground because they believed her death to be a mortal sin, and since her father remarried six weeks ago, her mother’s ashes have been socked away in a drawer. Glorieta has about a month before Día de los Muertos, and she wants to use that time to convince her aunt that her mother deserves to be honored and not forgotten. But she also has to deal with a cruel new stepsister, an out-of-work father, and political disagreements among neighbors, some of whom call the town’s many undocumented immigrants “aliens” and others who say “refugees.” Although the plot grows too busy at times, the combination of magical realism, syncretism, and Catholicism is thoughtful and realistic, not preachy, and is accessible to believers and nonbelievers alike. Perhaps most important, Glorieta’s desperation is affecting and wrenching. The complex, layered plot pulls no punches.”
—Kirkus Reviews