Rudolfo Anaya weaved bilingual holiday tale for children
An author known as the father of Chicano literature left behind a bilingual children’s book after his 2020 death, telling a story about Christmas in the American Southwest.
The tale from Rudolfo Anaya, who died from natural causes at 82, is being published posthumously for the holiday season by Museum of New Mexico Press with parallel text in Spanish and English. The story extends a cycle of Anaya’s illustrated children’s books with a playful cast of animal characters, centered around a tiny, inquisitive owl named Ollie Tecolote.
The book was crafted by Anaya painstakingly in his waning year as an invitation to children to explore literature in English and Spanish, said Enrique Lamadrid, a publisher and retired chairman of the Spanish teaching department at the University of New Mexico. Lamadrid collaborated closely with Anaya in his final years.