All Around Us

by Xelena González, Adriana M. Garcia (Illustrator)

Overview

Circles are all around us. We just have to look for them. Sometimes they exist in the most unusual places.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781941026762
Publisher:	Lee & Low Books
Publication date:	10/17/2017
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	135,492
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	3 - 7 Years

About the Author

Xelena González is a storyteller, a screenwriter, a poet, and an author of picture books. Her storytelling skills were honed as a children's librarian in San Antonio, Texas, and in an international school in Guangzhou, China. As a visiting author, she has introduced her method of "tai chi storytelling" to more than sixty schools and libraries around the United States. She is a member of the Tap Pilam Coahuiltecan Nation and still lives in San Antonio, where she grew up. You can find out more about González and her work at https://www.xelena.space/.

Adriana M. Garcia is a visual artist, a muralist, and an illustrator. She is the recipient of a Pura Belpré Illustrator Award Honor for her debut picture book, All Around Us by Xelena González. Garcia has exhibited her artwork nationally and has presented at conferences, schools, and museums around the United States. She especially loves painting portraits of strong women to honor those who have come before and those who continue to lead by example. Garcia lives in San Antonio, Texas, and you can find her online at adrianamjgarcia.com.

Editorial Reviews

08/21/2017
A girl and her grandfather contemplate circles, both physical and metaphorical, in this thought-provoking tale of family, community, and interconnection, a debut for both author and artist. As they walk through a suburban neighborhood of shingled houses and chain-link fences, the grandfather suggests that a rainbow overhead is actually a full circle: “The rest of it is down below, in the earth, where water and light feed new life.” Soon, the girl is noticing circles everywhere, including the roundness of their eyes and the way her grandfather “saves the stems, leaves, and seeds” of the vegetables they grow to rebury. “What we take from the earth, we return,” he tells her. On several pages, González’s text follows soaring arcs itself, and circular shapes dominate Garcia’s multilayered illustrations. Her tender portraits highlight the intimate bond between the narrator and her grandfather, while bright, zigzagging lines create a setting that hums with energy, underscoring a connection between people and planet. The family’s mestizo heritage is central to the story, including a tradition of burying a mother’s placenta when a child is born, which the author’s note discusses in more detail. Ages 3–7. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"All Around Us begs to be shared over and over. The use of lines and strokes conveys energy, spirit, magic. And I love the way it connects us all to the idea that we come from inside, from the earth, from something gentle and primal, and that is where go back to--and we better take care of it." -- Yuyi Morales

"A girl and her grandfather contemplate circles, both physical and metaphorical, in this thought-provoking tale of family, community, and interconnection." -- Publishers Weekly

"The author's direct approach and light touch soften the otherwise weighty subject matter. . . . Life-affirming in its quiet splendor." -- Kirkus Reviews

"It's gorgeous, quite frankly." -- School Library Journal

"A transcendent, perfectly gorgeous book." -- Naomi Shihab Nye

Pura Belpré Illustrator Honor, Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC)
American Indian Youth Literature Award, American Library Association (ALA)
International Latino Book Award, Latino Literacy Now
Skipping Stones Honor Award, Skipping Stones Magazine
Notable Children's Book, Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC)

Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award, Texas State University College of Education
Best Picture Book, Texas Institute of Letters (TIL)

From the Publisher

2017-08-07
In González and Garcia's picture-book debut, a girl and her grandfather reflect on the cycles that characterize life, death, and renewal. "Grandpa says circles are all around us." Above the girl's head, a rainbow stretches across the sky, a vibrant half circle. The other half? It's beneath the Earth, unseen, nourishing. With this modest declaration, González asks readers to rethink the world as one full of unceasing rebirth. A clearer example of this viewpoint soon follows. In the garden, Grandpa and the girl tend to their lettuce, carrots, and chiles, with the resulting stems, leaves, and seeds going back into the ground. "What we take from the earth we return," says Grandpa. Measured and subdued, the bare-bones story demands patience, which may irk readers with a preference for livelier stories, but the author's direct approach and light touch soften the otherwise weighty subject matter. Faded, sketched lines and arcs of dense light enclose the girl and Grandpa (both depicted with golden-brown skin) in half-formed and fully formed circles from picture to picture, while shadows and colors intertwine with people and the scenes around them. On a smaller scale, the duo notes how circles shape their bellies as well as their eyes. Yet it's the final scene—a girl and her grandfather sitting near the buried ashes of their ancestors—that brings everything full circle. In her author's note, González, a member of the Auteca Paguame family of the Tap Pilam Coahuitecan nation, references her, and by extension her characters', mestizo heritage. Life-affirming in its quiet splendor. (author's note) (Picture book. 3-7)

Kirkus Reviews