THE YOUNG TEACHER AND THE GREAT SERPENT

A convergence of traditions emerges when a young teacher joins an Indigenous community living beside the Amazon River.

Fresh off her studies, a young woman from the city reluctantly prepares for her first teaching assignment, at La Comunidad Las Delicias, where about 50 Indigenous families live. Her journey from the city to Las Delicias takes four days. Finally, she arrives at the village. Palomino’s panoramic artwork depicts the remarkable trek by featuring a series of expansive, formidable, lushly colored double-page spreads. The teacher settles into the ramshackle school with help from the children. Her treasured books are “the only things that [make] her feel sure of herself.” When a fearful storm brews one day, the students tell the teacher that the great serpent is coming. At first, she dismisses the warnings as mere legends, but as she heads to high ground with the rest of Las Delicias, she sees the river become “a great serpent of mud that carried off everything it found in its path,” including her books. To mend the young teacher’s heartbreak, the women and children of Las Delicias embroider and sew together cloth books, uniting their own stories and legends into a reforged library. Translated from Spanish, this is a gracefully told tale of cross-cultural dialogue, bolstered by stunning illustrations. A subtle, incisive rumination on the repercussions of colonization runs through the work, inviting further rereads. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Undeniably marvelous.