Chicano author, illustrator collaborate on adventure
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The 81-year-old author is often called a dean of Chicano literature. The illustrator is a younger muralist steeped in the visual traditions of Mexican-American pop culture and low-rider cars.
Together, novelist Rudolfo Anaya and painter Moises Salcedo — who goes by El Moises — have created a bilingual children’s book with parallel texts in Spanish and English about the adventures of a tiny owl named Ollie who longs to read on his own, even as he skips school and tangles with a cast of conniving animal characters in the hills and skies of northern New Mexico.
Anaya achieved lasting literary fame with the novel “Bless Me, Ultima” in 1972 about a boy’s coming of age in postWorld War II New Mexico under the guidance of a traditional spiritual healer. The book became a movie — and recently an opera.
The new children’s book from the Museum of New Mexico Press— titled “Owl in a Straw Hat,” or “El Tecolote del Sombrero de Paja” — is chocked full of references to northern New Mexico geography and homespun Hispanic tradition — from posole soup and pinon nuts to the “acequia” organizations that help irrigate fields and lend a special order to local rural life.
Anaya said the work is a heartfelt effort to encourage shared family reading in English or Spanish, with eye-grabbing imagery.
The book’s illustrations spring from the brush of Mexican-born, Arizona-raised El Moises — who made New Mexico his adopted home nearly a decade ago. His other recent commissions include urban murals, a tequila logo, CD covers and more.
The 45-year-old illustrator is a father of five who often paints at a weathered living-room table amid the bustle of family. El Moises says people call him a Chicano artist, but it’s really just his take on everyday life.
“Bold and bright has always been my thing,” he said. “I love low-riders because I grew up around them . ... I just think that I’m an artist who is narrating his life.”
One of the new book’s characters — a hungry and untrustworthy wolf in sunglasses named Luis Lobo — is adapted from a self-designed tattoo on the artist’s upper arm. Other characters include a young raven and crow who prefer video games to school. There are positive role models, too — a disciplined roadrunner who drives a dazzling low-rider car and a loving grandmother “Nana” owl.
El Moises and Anaya already are working on a sequel that explores concerns about childhood bullying — something the illustrator and a 13-yearold son have been grappling with recently in Albuquerque, culminating in the decision to do home schooling.
Anaya, a widower who lives in Albuquerque with a dachshund at his side, continues to work steadily on essays and novels for grown-up readers.