ZULEMA AND THE WITCH OWL/ZULEMA Y LA BRUJA LECHUZA
by Xavier Garza & illustrated by Xavier Garza
The disturbing use of scare tactics to reform a mean-spirited, nine-year-old bully lies at the heart of this bilingual English/Spanish story. One-dimensional Zulema is “the meanest little girl in the whole wide world,” equally unleashing her wrath at children, adults, puppies and kittens. But she finds her comeuppance in her 90-year-old grandmother, who warns her of the Witch Owl that “always comes looking for mean little boys and girls” and takes them away. Undeterred, Zulema continues in her ways, but at night she investigates a tapping at her window and discovers the oversized, white-feathered body and creepy wide eyes of the Witch Owl, ready to take an instantly reformed Zulema away. With a suspicious white feather falling from her hair, Grandma intervenes to assure Zulema that it was just a bad dream. Lurid gouaches paint grotesque expressions, and the device of a vignette of the grandmother’s face gradually transforming into the frightening bird adds to the disquieting theme. What might work well as an oral cautionary tale translates into a detrimentally moralistic book. (Picture book. 6-8)