After Odilia, 16, and her four younger sisters find a body floating in the river, they drive across the Mexican border to return the drowned man home. Their real mission, though, is to get to Abuelita's house and find their father, who abandoned Mamá and his daughters a year earlier. In true mythic style, the girls encounter heroes and monsters on their perilous, sometimes gruesome journey, including attacks by a coven of winged witches and creatures from Mexican folklore. After falling under the enchantment of an evil sorceress and an ancient fortune-teller, they are saved by Llorona, who looks monstrous but is the protector of the Azteca people and shows the five sisters their way. Just as compelling as the vivid fantasy is the realism, especially the standoffs and reconciliations among the caring sisters, and the final shocking truth about their father and themselves is far from a sweet resolution. Readers will be drawn by the contemporary family drama and the magic, and they'll appreciate the author's note that discusses the story's roots in Mexican folklore and The Odyssey.

In a witty voice, fifteen-year-old Odilia Garza recounts how she and her four younger sisters discover a corpse in a river near their Texas home and return him to his Mexican family across the border. Magical realism is introduced through several Mexican mythological characters who both challenge and help the girls on their Odyssey-like journey in this story of sisterly love. Glos.

In her first fantasy, Pura Belpré winner McCall (Under the Mesquite, 2011)tells the story of five sisters and their myriad adventures as they travel from their home in Texas to Mexico. When narrator and eldest Odilia and her sisters, Juanita, Velia, Delia and Pita, find a dead man in their swimming hole, Odilia wants to call the authorities. She is soon overruled by her sisters, who clamor to return the man to his family and visit their grandmother, all of whom live in Mexico. What follows is a series of adventures that hover somewhere on the border between fantasy and magical realism as the sisters are helped and hindered by supernatural forces including Latin American legends La Llorona, lechuzas and chupacabras. Despite multiple decisions that lead them into danger, the younger sisters persist in dismissing Odilia's warnings, their bad choices ranging from silly to decidedly immature. When they reach their grandmother's house, the dialogue-heavy story continues with extensive reflection of a level of maturity incongruous with the behavior exhibited in prior pages. The sisters then return home to face real-world problems that may prove most challenging of all. While this story is sometimes bogged down by moralizing and adventures that don't always seem to support the plot, originality and vibrancy shine through to make it a worthwhile read despite its flaws. (Fantasy. 9-14)

Gr 6 Up-This novel more than fulfills the promise of McCall's Under the Mesquite . In Summer of the Mariposas , she audaciously sets out to retell Homer's Odyssey within the context of Latino folklore. Odilia is the oldest of five sisters who have vowed to stay together forever. When they happen upon the body of a drowned man in their swimming hole, they decide to take him back to Mexico to his family, who happen to live nearby their own grandmother. La Llorona appears to Odilia and becomes her mentor and guide. The journey to the girls' grandmother's ranch involves getting across the border with a corpse without being caught by authorities. Then the magical realism kicks in as Odilia and her sisters have to combat various supernatural beings, including a shape-shifting witch and the dreaded Chupacabras , the monster who eats goats. These are just some of the connections, especially with the books of scary short stories mentioned below, that make this book such a rich source of material to introduce children to Latino myths, as well as the Odyssey itself. I love McCall's take on La Llorona , whom she sets out to redeem as a sympathetic mother figure, rather than the scary child kidnapper she is most often made out to be.