Chiles for Benito/Chiles Para Benito

by Ana Baca

In a magical bilingual picture book that celebrates a hallowed Southwestern spice and the risk taken by a young, hopeful boy, Benito trades his family's cow for a handful of powerful seeds, but when the seeds appear to only grow weeds and the neighboring farmers begin to complain, Benito almost gives up hope.

32 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2003

Reviews

[Matthew Horhoruw]

The Story "Chiles for Benito" is about a grandma and her grandchild picking the chiles from their garden. The child was confused to why they have to do this due to the fact that it might take forever to finish and she was so confused about it. The grandma tells her a story of her great grandpa who traded his cow for magical seeds and those magical seeds started to bare chilies for people and it was so much they they could provide for there families and for the neighborhood. This then goes back to the grand daughter realizing that they are doing the picking of the chilies because its a family tradition that gets passed from generation to generation and she becomes appreciative of this. This book had alot of highlights to what we are learning in class about picture books. Some of them is the 3d images from what we learned if there is a person in 2d you can tell they are that big of an importance to the story at that moment and it really showed because from the beginning you see the chilies in the background but they are really in 3D wheres as little things like the animals aren't in 3d.