Written by Pat Mora, Illustrated by Raul Colón
Alfred A. Knopf, 1997
It was midnight. The light of the full moon followed the tired old car.
The plot in a nutshell: A boy develops a love of books.
Tomás travels with his migrant farm worker family from Texas to Iowa for the summer. While his parents work, he carries water to them and plays with the other children. His grandfather tells them stories and encourages Tomás to go to the library to learn new stories. When Tomás visits the library, he is overwhelmed at how big it is and a nice librarian invites him to come in and have a cool glass of water. She finds out he is interested in tigers and dinosaurs and brings him some books to read. He is so engrossed in them that he doesn’t notice when the library closes and she let him check the books out under her name. He reads them to everyone. He continues going to the library and getting new books all summer and he teaches the librarian some Spanish words. When the time comes for him to leave, he brings her some homemade pan dulce from his mother and she gives him a book to take with him as a gift. Grandfather declares him to be the new family storyteller.
I wonder if the librarian ever knew what became of Tomas.
I loved this book from the first read and only loved it more as I learned more about the story behind it. Author Pat Mora is a Mexican American writer of stories and poetry and she wrote this story in honor of the real Tomás, who grew up to become Dr. Tomás Rivera, chancellor of the University of California at Riverside. A note in the back of the book shares more of his story, including the fact that the campus library at the university now bears his name, which is particularly poignant when you see how impactful a small library in Iowa was on his life and the lives of those he taught and mentored during his lifetime.
The artwork, from illustrator Raul Colón, starts in darker shades that lighten up as the story progresses and many of them use etching tools to give them a vintage appearance that works really well. Tomás has an earnest and open face that makes him someone you root for from the very beginning. The illustrations show us what is going on in his mind as he reads his new books and reminds us how wonderful it can be to lose yourself in a good story. The librarian’s kindness is beautifully understated here, but you can easily recognize how his life could have ended up very differently if someone had turned him away from the library instead of welcoming him. It’s a wonderful story that’s beautifully told.
And what did we learn? What I take away from this book is that a little encouragement from someone can set your life on an entirely different course.
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