I Am La Chiva!

Starred review from March 15, 2024

PreS-Gr 2-If Little Blue Truck got more vibrant color and headed for South America, it might look and sound a bit like this charming debut picture book. The colorful bus bounds through the Andes, picking up farmers to take to the city square for the market. Each colorful spread is met with four lines of sweet rhymes. Kids will enjoy looking at all the details in the vibrant illustrations: from the cat and frog hiding among flowers in the lush mountains to the various foods people put in their baskets. Spanish words are mixed with English and easy to deduce from the context: "Marina brings onions, sweet corn, and bananos. She goes to the market to help her hermanos." Back matter includes an author's note about a childhood in Colombia and a glossary of the Spanish words used in the story.VERDICT A bright and welcoming addition to books about vehicles, with a huge bonus of centering contemporary Colombian culture.-Carrie Voliva

Copyright 2024 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 20, 2024
“On breathtaking mountains, where coffee beans grow,/
I carry my friends to the green hills below.” In an exuberant debut, Hernández foregrounds La Chiva, “a colorful rustic bus used as public transportation in rural areas of Colombia,” per back matter. Written in bouyant rhyming quatrains from the vehicle’s perspective, La Chiva describes picking
up passengers en route to the mercado in town. As the group makes its way (“We turn up the music and play vallenato./ We sing and have fun as we reach el mercado”), La Chiva breaks down, and the riders must band together to find a solution. Crisp rhymes in English and Spanish offer the feel of a bus bustling with animals and people, while Gómez’s digitally finished sketches contribute layered and saturated images of flora and fauna. An author’s note and glossary conclude this feel-good ride. Ages 2–5.

Starred review from June 1, 2024
Climb aboard for a trip you won't forget! La Chiva, a bus that drives through the Andes, narrates this peppy tale. Painted with vibrant hues and patterns, this open-air bus rises early--"before Se�or Sun"--and picks up farmers and their products, from Do�a Ines and her arepas and huevos to Don Ernesto and his pig. La Chiva and the passengers sing as they roll past a verdant countryside. But soon La Chiva gets a flat tire and must pull over. Luckily, everyone works together to replace the tire with a spare--they are a community, after all. Once they reach the lively town square, the passengers disembark and sell their wares to grateful customers, while children play tag and hopscotch. Before the day is over, the group has a present for La Chiva (a replacement tire for the spare), but to La Chiva, the people themselves are the best gift. Alvarez G�mez makes superb use of color: the lush greens of the surrounding country, punctuated by pops of red, orange, and purple; rich earth tones for the buildings in the square; and, of course, La Chiva, a veritable rainbow. Interspersed with Spanish, the rhyming verse bounces along as energetically as the titular bus. In the backmatter, Hern�ndez explains that La Chiva buses are common to rural Colombia and notes that the story is rooted in her own childhood memories. A delightful journey; readers will be eager for repeat trips. (author's note, glossary) (Picture book. 2-5)

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July 1, 2024
"Me llamo La Chiva. That's me! Beep, beep, beep!" But this chiva is not a goat, it's a bus (helpfully explained in an author's note) decorated with bright patterns that travels through a town in the Andes. Cheerful rhyming text follows the bus on its way to a market in town, including a stop for a flat tire that the passengers help fix. Painterly digital illustrations in vibrant colors feature a smiling bus, diverse community, and playfully exaggerated steep mountain roads. Also available in Spanish as ¡Me llamo la Chiva!: El colorido bus de los Andes.

(Copyright 2024 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)