Southwest Children's Literature

Sun Logo


Festival of the Bones/El festival de las calaveras: The Little-Bitty Book for Day of the Dead

Book Review:

The Festival of Bones: El festival de las calaveras: The Little-Bitty Book of Day of the Dead was originally published in Mexico and is now available in a bilingual format. This book is about the celebration of the Day of the Dead/El día de los muertos, which is a holiday celebrated in Mexico from October 31st to November 2nd. In order for readers to fully understand The Festival of Bones, it is best to be familiar with the celebration and learn the vocabulary that is used in this book. However, The Festival of Bones includes facts about the Day of the Dead/El día de los muertos and how to celebrate this tradition.

Luis San Vicente is a respected artist and demonstrates his abilities beautifully in The Festival of Bones. He uses scratchboard for his illustrations, which reveals playfulness with charismatic skeleton characters along with bold colors to catch the reader's eye. Each page has fascinating illustrations that will lead readers to ask questions.

The book begins with a skeleton musician playing the guitar and singing about the dead celebrating their day. The following pages are short poems based on the different animated skeletal characters in the illustrations. The Festival of Bones has both rhyming and repeating phrases. However, reading this text in its original Spanish version, El festival de las calaveras, is brilliant due to the flow of language. Luis San Vicente has captured the Mexican celebration through his remarkable illustrations and written work.


to mainpage

About the Book | Book Review | Children's Voices | Lesson Plan | About the Reviewer