K-Gr 2-Eight-year-old Ti Marie, a Haitian girl, longs to be an artist. At every opportunity she draws with the meager means she has, using such items as red brick, moss, and charcoal to create her pictures. She dreams of having real paints, brushes, and canvas-supplies her parents can't afford. After observing the colorful painting adorning the buildings in the yard of the artist Msie Antoine, who is also a powerful priest and healer, the girl raids his trash after dark, turning up a bit of precious paint in the bottom of discarded tubes. She uses it, along with her more rudimentary drawing tools, to spruce up the wall behind the dull and scantily trafficked area in the marketplace where her mother peddles her vegetables. Ti Marie's pictures become the talk of the village, drawing attention to her mother's stand as well as compliments from many, including Msie Antoine. As they did in Galimoto (Lothrop, 1990), this author and illustrator gently and deftly portray a child with few material goods but with plenty of hope, dreams, and ingenuity.-Tom S. Hurlburt, La Crosse Public Library, WI

United by themes of harvest, work, values, and home, these brief poems honor the lives of migrant farmworkers and celebrate an alphabetic list of Spanish words. Each poem appears first in Spanish and then in an English translation on the same page. Vibrant gouache paintings depict sunlit farmlands and laborers at work and at home in this book dedicated to the memory of César Ch vez.

Using the Spanish alphabet as a template, Ada has written 27 poems that celebrate both the bounty of the harvest and the Mexican heritage of the farmworkers and their families. The poems, presented in both Spanish and English, are short and simple bursts of flavor: Arboles Trees, Betabel Beet, Cesar Chavez, etc. Silva's sun-drenched gouache paintings are robust, with images sculpted in paint. Brimming with respect and pride, the book, with its mythic vision of the migrant farm worker, will add much to any unit on farming or Mexican American heritage. (Reviewed April 15, 1997)