With its gestures to other tales and to magic realism, the volume is thoroughly beguiling in both word and image. The spirited parrot, a lightning-fast pace, droll illustrations, and a recipe for flan on the endpapers combine for a wondrous piece of bookmaking. Nanita is welcomed with glad cries by her father, and she attends her First Communion in soft slippers that he has made for her. The ranchero’s parrot (who sports an eyepatch from his pirate days) befriends Nanita, and they plot their escape, but not until the old woman teaches Nanita how to make flan. The ranchero takes her in, but the old woman takes her shoes and makes Nanita do all the work. The shoes have a spirit all their own, so when Nanita awakes she is far away by a house in the desert. Nanita has watched him work, so one night she makes a wonderful pair of shoes herself out of scraps in bright colors, and falls asleep still wearing them. Nanita’s father the shoemaker is so busy in their tiny Mexican town that he has no time to make her shoes, even though it will soon be her First Communion.
In perfect harmony with Geeslin’s story Mathers captures the rose, purple, lemon-yellow, and desert-green of Mexico. The story is just as stuffed, wordy beyond effect, and without personality the cautionary elements are thoroughly diluted, and the only suspense-in the encounter with the weasel-quickly dissipates. Leola is drawn with exacting realism, while the bears have the faces and demeanor of the stuffed toys won at a carnival.
The artwork is a curious combination of the overly observed and caricature. They ask after her manners, which she admits she’s ignored her tears show her for the child she is, and the mother bear loads a basket and sends a contrite Leola home with an escort. Leola misbehaves, eating what she’s not supposed to, sits even though she hasn’t been invited, and is found by the three bears upon their return. She gets lost in the woods, is frightened by a weasel, and comes across the inn that the three bears run they’ve left the place while some baked goods cool, and so the story line joins the original. Rosales spins the story of the three bears with African-American elements Leola, in the Goldilocks role, runs off to do what she wants, in spite of her grandmother’s warning not to go astray.
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