San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Strong women, brave kids, even LBJ
San Antonio artist Noé González Garza drew on his own memories for the illustrations in “Glove for a Lady,” a new children’s book about a visit that then-President Lyndon Johnson paid to a school in Cotulla in 1966.
“I remember you could feel the excitement, the energy, because Cotulla is a one-traffic-light town,” said Garza, who was in kindergarten or first grade back then. “I didn’t know at the time, really, the historical impact of it. When you’re little, you’re just like, ‘I’ve never seen a limo like that.’ ”
The book was written by his cousin, Gerónima Garza. It is one of a handful of new releases for young readers by San Antonio writers and visual artists that grown-ups (or little ones with disposable income) might want to consider as they shop for holiday gifts.
In addition to “Glove for a Lady,” the offerings include “Revolutionary Women of Texas and Mexico,” a coloring book by Kathy and Lionel Sosa, and “La Llorona Can’t Scare Me/La Llorona no me asusta” written and illustrated by Xavier Garza.
Here’s a look at all three.
‘Glove for a Lady’
“Glove for a Lady” is set on the day of Johnson’s visit to Welhausen School, the school for Mexican American children where he had taught and served as principal in 1928. He and first lady Lady Bird Johnson made the trek almost exactly a year after he signed the Higher Education Act into law in 1965. The legislation was designed to make higher education more accessible. At the school, the president spoke about the importance of education.
The book tells the story through the eyes of two little girls, Licha and Teresa. When the first lady drops one of her white gloves, Teresa rushes to retrieve it for her, prompting Secret Service agents to spring into action. Lady Bird Johnson demands they let the girl go and thanks the child in Spanish — a language the children were forbidden from speaking at the school. By the end of the book, the girls are talking about the possibility they could grow up to become president themselves.
Johnson spoke in the school’s auditorium. Garza didn’t get to hear him but clearly remembers watching his arrival.
“Out of this limo comes all these guys in black,” he said. “I almost thought it was the police or something — they had radios and dark glasses.
“I was excited, but when you’re that small, it doesn’t sink in that this guy is the president of the United States.
Then, of course, out comes Lady Bird, wow, in my head, I’m thinking, ‘He’s got a pretty wife or a pretty girlfriend or something.’ And I thought they must be important.”
Garza, who has taught at Columbia Heights Elementary School for 20 years, also has worked as a commercial artist and has done some book covers. “Glove for a Lady” is the first book he has illustrated all the way through.
“My prima came up with the story, but I made the art my own,” he said. “It became personal, and it still is, because that kind of connection goes deep.”
He gave his sketches and completed illustrations for the book to his cousin. They will be donated to the Brush Country Museum, which includes displays about Johnson’s time in Cotulla.
Where to buy it: The book costs $9.99. Signed copies can be ordered from delalmapublications.com. It also is available at amazon.com.
‘Revolutionary Women of Texas and Mexico’
Kathy and Lionel Sosa’s book holds ready-to-color portraits of 23 women, each accompanied by a short biography. They include Isabel Vargas Lizano, who sang rancheras dressed in men’s clothes under the name Chavela Vargas; healer Teresa Urrea, who fought for the rights of Indigenous communities in Mexico; and Alice Dickerson Montemayor, a social worker and activist in South Texas who worked to make sure Mexican American families could apply for services that sheriffs and judges denied them in the 1930s and ’40s.
The coloring book is a spinoff of “Revolutionary Women of Texas and Mexico: Portraits of Soldaderas, Saints and Subversives,” which was published last year by Maverick Books, a Trinity University Press imprint. That book — which Kathy Sosa edited with Ellen Riojas Clark and Jennifer Speed — is a compilation of essays, each accompanied
by a black-and-white portrait by the Sosas.
Sandra Cisneros was one of the contributors, writing essays on Urrea and Lizano. When she got her copy, she told Kathy Sosa it should be a coloring book.
“I mentioned it to Marguerite Avery, my publisher at Trinity Press, not really believing it would go anywhere because university presses are not known for their coloring books,” Sosa said. “And then (director) Tom Payton came back and said, ‘No, this isn’t something we normally do, but we’re going to do it because we think it’s a really great idea.’ ”
The coloring book includes a few portraits that aren’t in the first one, including labor organizer Dolores Huerta. Three contributors to the essay collection —Cisneros, Clark and Laura Esquivel — also get their own portraits.
The book already is in its third printing. Sosa chalks that up to the fact so many adults have gotten into coloring and to the appeal of strong women.
“We’ve all been waiting for cool things like this to share with our daughters and friends,” she said.
Where to buy it: The book costs $9.95. It is available at the San Antonio Museum of Art, Larder and Curio at the Hotel Emma, Feliz Modern, Feliz Pop, Rancho Diaz, SA Flavor, Schnables, The Twig Book Shop, Nowhere Bookshop. Barnes & Noble and the Guadalupe Latino Bookstore & Gift Shop.
‘La Llorona Can’t Scare Me / La Llorona no me asusta’
Xavier Garza has included scary creatures in his books before, but for his latest, he wanted to write about and draw a lot of them.
“I wrote a list of what cucuys (boogeymen) I would want in there — La Llorona, the witch owls, the duendes (goblins), the Donkey Lady, the little devils, chupacabras — just making a list of the cucuys that were the most popular, that kids would readily recognize,” said Garza, an artist and writer who also teaches at Northwest Vista College.
“And after I did that, I wanted to incorporate some lucha libre elements into it. In the wrestler movies, the Santo was always fighting some kind of monster.”
The book begins with a little boy named Damian tucked into bed, his room decorated with posters and dolls of lucha libre figures. He is visited by La Llorona, the ghost of a woman who roams the Earth seeking her drowned children. She peers through his bedroom window and wails, trying to strike fear into the little boy’s heart.
No dice.
Damian is not even a little bit shaken, assuring her he cannot be frightened by her antics. Floored by that response, she summons her scary pals to give it a go. None succeed. Eventually, the reader learns — spoiler alert! — that Damian feels very safe thanks to his almighty luchador night light.
The story unfolds in English and Spanish, as is always the case in Garza’s books.
“There’s no disadvantage to a person knowing two languages,” he said. “I think it gives you an understanding of other cultures. There’s a poem used in another book where a little boy tells the dad, ‘Tell me a story, but tell it to me both in English and in Spanish, give me the best of both worlds.’ ”
Where to buy it: The book costs $18.95. It can be purchased at artepublicopress.com, as well as at Barnes & Noble and amazon.com.