The Skirt

The Bibliography
Soto, Gary. 1992. The Skirt. Ill. by Eric Velasquez. New York: Delacourt Press. ISBN 9780385306652

The Characters
Fourth grader Miata Ramirez and her best friend, Ana Madrigal, are the main characters of The Skirt. Other characters include Miata's parents and younger brother and a friend named Rodolfo.

The Plot
Miata accidentally leaves her skirt on the school bus one Friday afternoon. She's lost lots of other things before - books, sweaters, lunch money, even her shoes! - but this time, she lost something very important. She lost her folklórico skirt. Well, not her skirt, it actually belonged to her mother when she was little, living in Mexico. Miata is supposed to wear her skirt to perform a traditional dance after church on Sunday, but will she be able to? She and Ana must find her skirt before Sunday, without anybody else finding out about it!

The Setting
San Joaquin Valley, Sanger, California

The Theme
keeping family traditions alive

The Style
The Skirt is written in a very simple style, almost too simple for fourth graders, I think. The action of the story is fun, but the text seems to easy to read to me. Since the characters are fourth graders, I would think that fourth-grade kids would read it. Sometimes the sentences are complex, but more often than not, they are just simple. "It was a beautiful May.... This made him happy" (23).

The Analysis
This book seems dated to me. It was written in 1992 and it reads like it was written then. It's by no means a classic, but it doesn't have a timeless feel to it like a contemporary fiction book should. It also bothers me that the Spanish words are in italics. It breaks up the flow of the story and makes the family feel like outsiders to me instead of Mexican-Americans. I also don't like the term Mexican-American because Mexico is a part of America, too. The United States isn't the only place that is American... Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Cuba, Chile... all those places are American, too, just North, Central and South.

The Cultural Markers
Illustrations: The rich colors on the cover are mostly shades of green, red and white, the colors of the Mexican flag. Since that is the only illustration in color, it shows Miata as having warm, honey colored skin and dark brown hair, which is to be expected of a young Mexican girl. The rest of the illustrations are pencil and show Miata and Ana looking for the skirt, but the drawing on page 24 shows the dining area of Miata's house, complete with the entire family sitting around the table and artwork on the wall. The artwork is what I would image I would see in a traditional Mexican household. It looks to be Aztec or maybe Pueblo, or maybe it's just a drawing that's supposed to look traditional. The dining room illustration also shows plates on a china cabinet-type thing, which seems more Americanized. The illustrations show just what the book is about, a contemporary Mexican-American family.

Text: Miata describes Ana's appearance on page 14, "Little Ana had curly hair and a galaxy of freckles on her face. Miata had known one other Mexican girl who had freckles." This describes an atypical Mexican trait and identifies Miata, Ana and the other characters as Mexican. The characters also speak in Spanish on several occasions, throwing in a word here or there (¡Ay! ¡Qué bueno!) or speaking in complete sentences ("Todavía no está aquí" (17).)

Another cultural marker that shows the traditional Mexican-American family is the food that they eat. They eat carne del viernes, a meal made up of steak, frijoles, papas fritas, tortillas and salad. A mix of Mexican food and food from the United States. They also enjoy hamburgers and fries and, for breakfast, chorizo con huevos.

The folklórico dance and skirt are also cultural markers, but the style of dance and even the reason for the dance are not mentioned in the text.

The Review
Carolyn Phelan (Booklist, Oct. 15, 1992 (Vol. 89, No. 4))
Frequently scolded for losing things, fourth-grader Miata Ramires can't bear to tell her parents that she's left her treasured folklorico skirt on the Friday afternoon school bus. Mom wore the skirt as a child in Mexico and now looks forward to watching Miata wear it when her dance troupe performs in the church courtyard on Sunday. With help from an old friend and an old enemy, Miata breaks into the bus yard, retrieves the skirt, and wears it in her performance. A good beginning chapter book, this uses simple words without sounding too simplistic. Velasquez's eight drawings break up the text, heighten the drama, and provide sympathetic portrayals of the characters.

The Connection
I'd like to share this book and others by Gary Soto (Taking Sides, Jesse) then maybe prepare la comida that was mentioned in this story. Papas fritas, frijoles, tortillas, chorizo con huevos... Delicioso!