"Over the Rainbow": Fantasy Lands, Dream Worlds, and Magic Kingdoms

Literature Selections

--Vivimos en un mundo distinto, pero estaré contigo siempre que me recuerdes.--El partió silbando, pero me dejo su chirimía.  Desde entonces suelo salir por las tardes a caminar en el llano, y allá lejos…, toco en la flauta las canciones que aprendí en la región donde vive mi abuelo. ¹⁰

--“El zopilote y la chirimía” by Gabriela Olmos

These words from Gabriela Olmos’ folktale, “El zopilote y la chirimía”, reflect a powerful exchange between the main character, Concha and her grandfather in a story about the power of memory, tradition, and identity.  They evoke a sentiment that speaks to the need of belonging to something greater, a sentiment common to those who search for their place in history, to make sense of their past, their traditions, rituals and language in order to form identity.  As teachers, it is critical to understand who our students are by considering those forces in their lives that bind them, motivate them, and ultimately propel them to embark on their own journey in life.  Stories too can help us make sense of these ideas and the world. Through words and images, they can also transport us to new worlds where dreams are possible. 

 As I began my search for children’s literature regarding alebrijes, I soon came to the realization that it was a very difficult task.  In efforts to provide my students with authentic multicultural literature that could serve as a mirror of who my students are, my initial search criteria sought a fairy tale geared towards Latino/a primary students that dealt with the topic of alebrijes; one that was comprised of complex text in Spanish or both, Spanish and English; that offered vibrant illustrations resembling actual alebrijes; and that was authored by a writer/illustrator of Mexican descent.  After several extensive searches I managed to find three titles, of which only one was a fairy tale, and none fulfilled everything on my wish list.  As a teacher it is important to seek out literature that reflect and speak to the experiences of my students.  Rudine S. Bishop has written much on the idea of literature functioning as a vehicle for social agency that imparts cultural values, behaviors and norms.  She writes:

Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange.  These windows are also sliding doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author.  When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror.  Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience.  Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books.¹¹

In examining Bishop’s ideas, Tschida, Ryan, and Swenson add, “The significance of providing students with a host of books that represent both windows and mirrors cannot be more important in our world today.”¹² As teachers this is our charge—to provide students with the opportunity to engage in relevant and empowering experiences that bridge their funds of knowledge to the content being learned in the classroom.

In her Ted Talk presentation titled, “The danger of a single story”, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie discusses the power of stories to shape and reflect our views of each other and the world and the implications of a single narrative approach, particularly for children who come from marginalized communities.  She discusses how vulnerable we are in the face of a story and points to how they can hold power over others in how they are told, who tells them, when they are told, and how many stories are told, emphasizing that without many stories, we are limited in our scope of a people or an issue.  She states, “Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.”¹³  In seeking to avoid this single narrative approach, I made the choice to dig into other rich narratives that speak to stories of identity and dreams.  Some of these stories represent voices similar to those of my students, other do not.  Instead, I seek a balance of the “windows, mirrors, and sliding doors” that Bishop referred to.  In this way, I believe that in spite of a lack of literature for this topic, I have many other forms of narrative ranging from folk tales to realistic fiction that can supplement our understanding of identity and culture, and that compliment our exploration of arte popular mexicano and alebrijes.  In addition, the use of my students’ personal connections to these texts, coupled with their own alebrije stories present an opportunity for students to participate in creating the multiplicity of stories that we seek.

In “El zopilote y la chirimía”, Concha travels to the land of the dead to reconnect her grandfather with his flute through which he helped preserve cultural traditions for their community.  To prevent the music from being appropriated by the evil buzzards, Concha and her grandfather use their Huichol language to communicate, then later they are able to return to the land of the living with the flute when her family and others prepare altares for Day of the Dead.  Told through vibrant examples of Huichol visual art and folklore, this story helps readers imagine the land of the dead as the world in reverse:  up is down, down is up; the sun rises at night, while the moon shines when the dead awake.  Even food is backwards where they eat delicious worms and bugs.  It is not only a visually beautiful story, but it’s compelling and it’s language complex.  This story can be viewed through many lenses.  Lettycia Terrones discusses how visual elements in picture books help us understand how story works through its narrative.  She states, “Because the visual elements in picture books complement the textual narrative, it becomes important to evaluate how images are presented and how they interplay with the text and to question the intentionality of the artistic choice behind the image.”¹⁴  This book can be also be used to discuss traditions, family bonds, beliefs and religion, language, and fantasy.  In “Letting Stories Breathe”, Arthur Frank writes,  “Stories animate human life; that is their work.  Stories work with people, for people, and always stories work on people, affecting what people are able to see as real, as possible, and as worth doing or best avoided.”  He asks what is it about stories that enable them “to work as they do?” and argues that human life depends on stories because of  “the sense of self the stories impart, the relationships constructed around shared stories, and the sense of purpose that stories propose and foreclose”¹⁵.  In short, stories hold power in how we act, how we perceive, and in how relate to another.