Dona Flor

Title: Dona Flor

Author: Pat Mora

Illustrator: Raul Colon

Awards: 2006 Belpré Illustrator Medal Book, 2006 Belpré Author Honor Book, 2005 Golden Kite Award from the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators (SCBWI), 2006 ALA Notable Books, New York Public Library Books for Reading and Sharing, 2005, and Nick Jr. Magazine Best Book, 2005.

Medium: Watercolor washes, etching, colored and litho pencils.

Genre: Traditional Literature/Folklore

Theme: Friendship and love.

Summary: Dona Flor was a gigantic woman who lived in an American southwest village and heard a terrible roaring over her village along with her neighbors. Dona Flor investigated the noise and discovered something surprising.

Literary Elements: The genre is traditional literature/folklore and specifically a tall tale. The story of Dona Flor is a tall tale because tall tales are indigenous to United States and the story happened in the American Southwest (New Mexico, Arizona and etc) and it is usually about a person with exaggerated details about the person like being a giant or has amazing strength. Dona Flor is a giant woman and has the abilities to pluck stars out of the night sky and giving the wind a hug. The setting was in the past because it is a tall tale and integral to the tall tale with its southwestern environment with Native American style, culture and designs depicted in the illustrations. Dona Flor as a character is stereotypical flat tall tale characterization. She displayed no strengths or weaknesses or growth and change. However, she is child-like and would be easy for children to identify with in a maternal role and she interacted with the plot to solve the problem (the roaring noise). The plot is cumulative with the roaring getting louder and louder until Dona Flor discovered the source with self vs. other (the puma), self vs. society (children who teased Dona Flor) and self vs. nature (Dona Flor and the wind). The theme are friendship and love because the story showed a lot of love and friendship between Dona Flor and her neighbors, animals, nature and the puma. Dona Flor is always helping out the neighbors and doing good for the village. The style is in a classic Pat Mora style of stories about the Southwest and done in beautiful and colorful illustrations by Latin illustrators and rich language peppered with Spanish words. Pat Mora used similes to compare music and voices. For example, “Music smelled like spring” and “In a voice sweet as river music.” (Mora, 2005). The story is told from a third point-of-view.

Evaluation: Children will like this book with its charming tall tale and the colorful illustrations. This book would be good to introduce tall tales as a collection of folklore among other books to teach children folklore. The book would be good to introduce children to Southwest culture of America with its strong Native American and Spanish traditions. I enjoyed reading it and I think adults would like it too with the heartwarming simple story and vivid drawings.