José Alberto Gutiérrez y la biblioteca que creó
January 1, 2021
Kunkel and Escobar (illustrator of Planting Stories, rev. 1/19) present the lives of "two Jos�s." One is a child, known as Little Jos�, living in La Nueva Gloria barrio in Colombia; the other is his neighbor, Se�or Jos�, the real-life Jos� Alberto Guti�rrez, whose love of literacy inspired him to construct a community library at the turn of the twenty-first century. While the city of Bogot� sleeps, Se�or Jos�, a trash collector, uses his route to look for "hidden treasure...books!" Kunkel's implied metaphor -- one person's trash is another's treasure -- neatly structures this picture-book biography. Se�or Jos� rescues discarded books, and Little Jos� can't wait to read them on Saturdays when the doors to "Paradise" (i.e., Guti�rrez's community library) open wide. Escobar's spacious digital illustrations alternate single pages (including characters' side-by-side perspectives), spot images, and double-page spreads, whose muted cool blue tones and predominant vertical lines offer sweeping panoramic scapes of Bogot�'s streets and silhouetted mountains. Some of the images reflect readers' imaginary worlds (references to One Hundred Years of Solitude, Anna Karenina, and The Little Prince), capturing the unique experience that literature offers the mind. An author's note, "Featured Books," and websites are appended. Lettycia Terrones
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