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La Llorona / The Crying Woman. By Rudolfo Anaya. Illustrated by Amy Cordova. Translated by Enrique Lamadrid. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2011. 40 pp.
Amadito and the Hero Children / Amadito y los Niños Heroes. By Enrique R Lamadrid. Illustrated by Amy Cordova. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2011.60 pp.
These two children's books, La Llorona and Amadito, bring to the forefront very different stories that are sure to appeal to different audiences. I have never reviewed children's books before, but I feel qualified to render an opinion on these two, written by renowned Chicano writer Rudolfo Anaya and folklorist Enrique R. Lamadrid, because they are working within the traditional storytelling tradition and at the same time disrupting well-known narratives.
In retelling the well-known story of La Llorona (The Crying Woman), Rudolfo Anaya brings us a variant of the tale situated before the conquest of the Americas, and, although it remains a cautionary tale, the familiar narrative of a scorned woman is nowhere to be found, perhaps because the target audience is not an adult one. Unlike Anaya's La llorona, a novella (1994), this children's book presents a story imbued with all the elements of the classic folktale.
The traditional legend of La Llorona, the weeping woman who cries for her children after she commits infanticide, has numerous versions throughout the Americas; in one she commits the crime as revenge, to get even with her philandering husband, and in others she "saves" her children from formidable suffering. Anaya creates Maya, who, because she is bom with the sign of the Sun God, is doomed...