Carlos and the Cornfield/Carlos Y LA Milpa De Maiz

by Jan Romero Stevens, Jeanne Arnold (Illustrator)

A young boy learns the consequences of not following his father's directions for the proper way of planting corn

Genres: Childrens, Hispanic

Library Binding

First published April 1, 1999

Reviews

[Brad · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a story about a little Latino boy named Carlos who finds a pocket knife in a local shop that he will do whatever he can in order to come up with the money to buy it. He is very excited when his father offers to pay him enough money to get the knife if he plants corn. His father gives him very specific instructions about the planting process but, he doesn't seem to make much progress using that technique and decides to make some changes. His process gets all of the corn planted but the results turn out horribly wrong and, in order to fix his mistake Carlos has to sell his knife back to the store in order to buy new corn to start the growing process all over again when his parents are out of town. The second time around turns out good, except that the corn produced is blue! Carlos's father told him about how "you reap what you sow," and that motto comes true on a few occasions throughout the book. The blue corn helps his father know that Carlos had realized he had made some mistakes but, it turns out good for Carlos because he had learned a valuable lesson and he gets his knife back when the man at the store realizes what has happened as well.

Overall, this is a decent story with a great moral but, you have to be careful with how you would want to use it in your classroom. It is recommended as a story to complement Hispanic heritage month but, it can almost be seen as too stereotypical. Even the title can be a bad representation for the story. The author is trying to teach students about another culture but, she is not actually a part of the culture and I feel that is very evident in the story. It is a great book filled with many great, colorful illustrations working to represent a Latino family but, teachers do need to be cautious with how it is presented and used in today's society. A nice touch for this book as well as many others like it is that the words are in both English and Spanish on every page so that it can be read easily in either language.

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book with a strong moral. I liked the message that we can (and do) make mistakes, but we can then do what we can to fix them. I really like the dual-language, IMHO it normalizes speaking more than one language. Wish there had been more of these available when my girls were small.

[Rose]

831.54 Ste

[CFAITC]

This book, with both English and Spanish text, describes how Carlos learns about working in a cornfield.