Hispanic Heritage Month
It's almost time for Hispanic Heritage Month, celebrated each year from September 15 - October 15. Latino and Latina students are highly underrepresented in children's literature. It is especially important to have a collection of Latine books that represents the diversity of languages, cultures, ethnicities, and nationalities within the larger Latine community.
We've gathered a few of our favorite books by Latine creators to help you #shakeupyourshelves this month and every month!
#ShakeUpYourShelves with Our Libros Latinos Guide
Early Reader
Paletero Man meets Fry Bread in this vibrant and cheerful ode to plátanos, the star of Dominican cuisine, written by award-winning poet Lissette Norman, illustrated by Sara Palacios, and translated by Kianny N. Antigua.
Plátanos are Yesenia’s favorite food. They can be sweet and sugary, or salty and savory. And they’re a part of almost every meal her Dominican family makes.
Stop by her apartment and find out why plátanos go with everything—especially love!
Perfect for reading aloud and shared story time!
Laugh and count along with this lively cumulative romp told in a lyrical blend of Spanish and English by Pura Belpré Honor-winning author Anika Aldamuy Denise and illustrator Zara Gonzalez Hoang!
Nine kittens follow Gato Guapo around, but when it’s time to count them, one by one, they go missing, along with a piece of Gato Guapo’s clothes!
Young readers will love all the silliness that ensues as each naughty gatito dons a disguise and declares “Yo soy Gato Guapo!”.
A heartwarming bilingual picture book about a young boy who learns to accept that Abuela needs to retire her super capa.
Saturdays are superhero days. Equipped with their milkshakes and capas, Luis and his abuela can turn anything into an adventure.
But when Abuela gets sick, Luis has to learn a new way to be a hero. With some help from his sister, Luis learns that change isn’t all that bad and there are many new adventures to have, even if they look a little different.
Perfect for families experiencing sickness and loss, this engaging multigenerational story will help young children find the language to express their feelings and adjust to change.
Little Lobo and his friends are excited for the out-of-this-world book festival the Guadalupian Library hosts every year!
Everyone has a special book they're looking for, but there's so much to see and do first. From cookbook demonstrations and comics workshops to mask making and language classes, this library has something for everyone. Can Little Lobo, Bernabé, Kooky Dooky, Coco Rocho, and La Chida each find the book of their dreams?
Full of easy-to-remember Spanish vocabulary and packed with fun details, this colorful celebration of books, libraries, and all forms of reading will bring joy to young bookworms everywhere!
When Maribel's family has to move in with Tía Carmen because Papi lost his job, Maribel and her sister feel unsettled.
It’s not always easy sharing a room or being in a house full of loud cousins, but Papi reminds the girls that it’s only por un ratito—just for a little while. In the meantime, there is always someone to play with, the mealtimes are filled with music and laughter, and bedtime is for snuggling in tight. Maribel realizes that maybe being there por un ratito isn’t so bad after all.
From debut author Gabriela Orozco Belt and artist Richy Sánchez Ayala comes a moving story about family and change—and how love is always the constant.
Reina and her friend, Lila, practice gymnastics on Saturdays. It’s Reina’s favorite part of the week. But when Lila gets a puppy, Reina has to practice gymnastics by herself. Also, Lila’s dog is HUGE and Reina is afraid to admit to her friend that she is scared. What can Reina do?
Reina Ramos Meets a BIG Puppy is a Level Two I Can Read book, geared for kids who read on their own but still need a little help. Whether shared at home or in a classroom, the engaging stories, longer sentences, and language play of Level Two books are proven to help kids take their next steps toward reading success. Reina Ramos Meets a BIG Puppy contains several Spanish words and a glossary.
Middle Grade
Violeta Rubio only has one goal in mind for her first-ever trip to Puerto Rico: help Abuelita reopen her beloved restaurant. The only problem is that Violeta’s whole family thinks they can do it without her. Now Violeta doesn’t have anyone to hang out with or anything to do. But when best friend duo Diego and Lorena need help capturing the rumored chupacabra, Violeta sees her chance to change all that.
What she isn’t expecting is to run straight into the beast! Only…he isn’t as monstrous as everyone assumes. Violeta must find a way to keep Chupie hidden and convince her newfound friends that he isn’t anything to be scared of.
Saving Chupie captures the resilience of a young girl, a family, and an island in face of nearly impossible odds and proves that love and friendship conquers all in this timely new adventure inspired by Puerto Rican culture and lore.
It’s lunchtime for young El Toro and his friends—and each one is looking forward to a different kind of taco, their favorite!
The luchadores take a break from their training and head into town to eat. When they count their lunch money and discover they don’t have enough for tacos, they will have to work together on a creative, fun solution to earn plenty of dinero for a delicious all-you-can-eat spectacular!
Flavored with Spanish phrases and topped with plenty of humor, this early reader graphic novel is essential for those who want an action-packed story and lots of laughs.
If Mari Feijoo could, she would turn her family’s Peak Cubanity down a notch, just enough so that her snooping neighbor and classmate Mykenzye wouldn’t have anything to tease her about. That’s why this year, there’s no way that Mari’s joining in on one of the big-gest Feijoo family traditions—burning the New Year’s Eve effigy her abuela makes.
Only Mari never suspects that failing to toss her effigy in the fire would bring something much worse than sneering words at school: a curse of bad luck from El Cocodrilo. At first, it’s just possessed violins and grade sabotaging pencils, but once El Cocodrilo learns that he becomes more powerful with each new misery, her luck goes from bad to nightmarish as the curse spreads to her friend Keisha.
When Mari discovers her family’s gift to call upon their ancestors, she and her friends will have to find a way to work with the unexpected help that arrives from the far corners of Mari’s family tree. Will it be enough to defeat El Cocodrilo before he makes their last year of elementary school the worst ever and tears their friendship apart?
Seventh grader Wendy Toledo knows that black holes and immigration police have one thing in common: they can both make things disappear without a trace. When her family moves to a new all-American neighborhood, Wendy knows the plan: keep her head down, build a telescope that will win the science fair, and stay on her family’s safe orbit.
But that’s easier said than done when there’s a woman hiding out from ICE agents in the church across the alley—and making Wendy’s parents very nervous.
As bullying at school threatens Wendy’s friendships and her hopes for the science fair, and her family’s secrets start to unravel, Wendy finds herself caught in the middle of far too many gravitational pulls. When someone she loves is detained by ICE, Wendy must find the courage to set her own orbit—and maybe shift the paths of everyone around her.
Sicily Jordan’s worst nightmare has come true! She’s been enrolled in a new school, with zero of her friends and stuck wearing a fashion catastrophe of a uniform. But however bad Sicily thought sixth grade was going to be, it only gets worse when she does her class presentation.
While all her classmates breezed through theirs, Sicily is bombarded with questions on how she can be both Black and Panamanian. She wants people to understand, but it doesn’t feel like anyone is ready to listen—first at school and then at home. Because when her abuela starts talking mess about her braids, Sicily’s the only one whose heart is being crumpled for a second time.
Staying quiet may no longer be an option, but that doesn’t mean Sicily has the words to show the world just what it means to be a proud Black Panamanian either. Even though she hasn’t written in her journal since her abuelo passed, it’s time to pick up her pen again—but will it be enough to prove to herself and everyone else exactly who she is?
Teen
Cade has always loved to escape into the world of a good horror movie. After all, horror movies are scary—but to Cade, a closeted queer Latino teen growing up in rural Texas—real life can be way scarier.
When Cade is sent to spend the summer working as a ranch hand to help earn extra money for his family, he is horrified. Cade hates everything about the ranch, from the early mornings to the mountains of horse poop he has to clean up. The only silver lining is the company of the two teens who live there—in particular, the ruggedly handsome and enigmatic Henry.
But as unexpected sparks begin to fly between Cade and Henry, things get…complicated. Henry is reluctant to share the details of his mother’s death, and Cade begins to wonder what else he might be hiding. Inspired by the gothic romance of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and perfect for fans of Heartstopper and Bloom comes a modern love story so romantic it’s scary.
Ariana Ruiz wants to be noticed. But as an autistic girl who never talks, she goes largely ignored by her peers—despite her bold fashion choices. So when cute, popular Luis starts to pay attention to her, Ari finally feels seen.
Luis’s attention soon turns to something more, and they have sex at a party—while Ari didn’t say no, she definitely didn’t say yes. Before she has a chance to process what happened and decide if she even has the right to be mad at Luis, the rumor mill begins churning—thanks, she’s sure, to Luis’s ex-girlfriend, Shawni. Boys at school now see Ari as an easy target, someone who won’t say no.
Then Ari finds a mysterious note in her locker that eventually leads her to a group of students determined to expose Luis for the predator he is. To her surprise, she finds genuine friendship among the group, including her growing feelings for the very last girl she expected to fall for. But in order to take Luis down, she’ll have to come to terms with the truth of what he did to her that night—and risk everything to see justice done.
Julieta isn’t looking for her Romeo—but she is writing about love. When her summer writing teacher encourages the class to publish their work online, the last thing she’s expecting is to get a notification that her rom-com has a mysterious new contributor, Happily Ever Drafter. Julieta knows that happily ever afters aren’t real. (Case in point: her parents’ imploding marriage.) But then again, could this be her very own meet-cute?
As things start to heat up in her fiction, Julieta can’t help but notice three boys in her real life: her best friend’s brother (aka her nemesis), the boy next door (well, to her abuela), and her oldest friend (who is suddenly looking . . . hot?). Could one of them be her mysterious collaborator? But even if Julieta finds her Romeo, she’ll have to remember that life is full of plot twists. . .