In this bilingual love letter to a fellow artist, Yuyi Morales pays tribute to Frida Kahlo in a breathtaking mix of puppets, fabrics and paintings.
"Soy/I am," says a puppet in the exact likeness of Frida Kahlo, a ring of roses in her coal-black hair, rose-colored beads and a rainbow-striped scarf around her neck. A parrot in flight leads readers into the next three-dimensional scene: Frida gazes at a monkey in a tree holding a key, with Diego Rivera behind her, paintbrush in hand, and her small black dog alert beside her. The monkey hands her the key to the small yellow chest Frida holds in her hands. Morales plays with perspective next: readers see only the faces of Frida and the monkey, as if viewed from within the chest ("¡Aja!/Ah-ha!"). A Day of the Dead marionette comes out, and Frida's shoes come off: "Juego/I play." For a dream sequence, Morales shifts to paintings of Frida airborne in a full-skirted pink dress with arrows aloft around her. She discovers a fawn, pierced by an arrow--a nod to her El Venado Herido/The Wounded Deer (1946). Kahlo (who discovered painting while recovering from a bus accident) carries the deer to safety on her back--symbolic of the healing that art brought to her life.
"Y entiendo.../ And I understand... que amo/ that I love" says Frida, now reunited with Diego, the monkey, her dog and the fawn. Visually, this beautiful book will pull in young readers, while Frida Kahlo's fans will gain the most from Morales's magnetic compositions. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness