Los Gatos Black on Halloween by Marissa Montes

Los Gatos Black on Halloween by Marissa Montes is a wonderful book that teaches children about the tradition of Halloween from the Hispanic perspective. The book is based around the celebration of the Day of the Dead. Yuyi Morales illustrated this book beautifully. The illustrations are absolutely exquisite. Even though I enjoyed this book, I do not believe that it would be a book that I would share with my children in my classroom. I think that the children would find some of the ideas scary and the pictures frightening. I plan to teach kindergarten and it would be very difficult to explain some of these concepts to children so young. The other potential issue with this book would be the parents of the children. There may be some parents that would be highly against their children being exposed to ideas of witches, skeletons, and "the living dead". This book addresses some highly sensitive issues that need to be taken into consideration. Despite the fact that I thought it was a good book for me, I do not think that it is a book to be shared with children so young. I plan to one day teach in Lubbock and I am not sure that the community would agree with this selection. I do think that for older kids that have been exposed to topics of this nature and the idea of death has been explained, this book is wonderful. There are so many great craft lessons that can be created from this book, many of them art related.