Book Review: Bold, Brilliant, and Latine

If you’re looking for new books for your classroom for Hispanic Heritage Month or want some more pioneers of color to talk about at home or in class, check out Bold, Brilliant, and Latine by Alyssa Reynoso-Morris and illustrated by Sol Cotti.

This book features the stories of 52 Hispanic and Latine history makers past and present, complete with cute and colorful illustrations and a brief story about what makes them noteworthy.

It’s in chronological order so it starts with people your students (and you!) may not have heard of, like Victoria Montou, born Abdaraya Toya, who was abducted and enslaved in Haiti and helped train and fight along with other enslaved people in the Haitian Revolution. Or José Francisco Morazán Quesada, a military commander who helped liberate Honduras and was later president of the Federal Republic of Central America.

There are also more familiar names like Frida Kahlo, Celia Cruz, Gabríel Garcia Márquez, Cesar Chavez, Oscar de la Renta and Sonia Sotomayor. You’ll learn about the first Latina in space (Ellen Ochoa), a fighter for indigenous rights in Guatemala (Rigoberta Menchú), a three-time world surfing champion from Peru (Sofía Mulánovich) and a transgender woman who fought for justice for LGBTQ+ folks in New York (Sylvia Rivera).

The book includes musicians like Selena and Gloria Estefan, athletes like Lionel Messi and Roberto Clemente, entertainers like Guillermo del Toro and Lin Manuel Miranda, and actors like Salma Hayek and Jenna Ortega. You’ll also find scientists, politicians, activists and others who have made a mark in their field and on history.

Most of the people are presented in a single page with a drawing and a few paragraphs of biography. It’s enough to get people interested in learning more without going on for too long (this is a book for grades 2-5, after all). It might serve as inspiration to get kids to learn more about some of these figures and will definitely give you some people to talk about in history and other fields who are Latine and Hispanic.

About the book: 64 pages, hardcover. Published 2025 by Wide Eyed Editions. Suggested retail price $24.99.

Growing Up Ladybug and How to Become a Butterfly are both by Stepanka Sekaninova and illustrated by Linh Dao, and they came out at the same time and are on similar themes, so let’s look at them together.

Growing Up Ladybug is narrated by Mariella, a seven-spot ladybug. She talks about the parts of a ladybug, where they live, different kinds of ladybugs, why humans love them, their defenses against predators and the life cycle of a ladybug.

The drawings are cute if not always scientifically accurate, it’s not in such a way that’s likely to confuse kids (who probably already know that ladybug mamas don’t push their larval babies around in strollers, for instance.

It’s a good general description of the life cycle of a lady bug and why we like having them around.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Similarly, How to Become a Butterfly covers the life cycle of a butterfly, starting with caterpillars eating burning nettle leaves. (Here Amanda is the narrator.) The book talks about a few of the more than 18,000 daytime butterflies in the world as well as other creatures that live in the meadow (there’s that ladybug again, along with crickets, bees and other bugs).

It also covers some of the enemies of caterpillars like wasps and spiders, and the defenses that caterpillars use to try to prevent being eaten. It illustrates how caterpillars grow and change as they molt and prepare to pupate, and what a caterpillar looks like before and while it is forming its chrysalis. And while the book uses the word metamorphasis it doesn’t really talk about what happens between the caterpillar forming a chrysalis and the butterfly hatching.

This butterfly is a peacock butterfly, and once it hatches the book covers the parts of a butterfly and the life cycle. It also talks about nocturnal moths (though it says nocturnal butterflies are “usually called moths” when moths are actually a different species) and what butterflies do at night.

I’m maybe a little hard on this book because my daughter is a butterfly expert from way back, but it is still cute and good for the very basic basics of the butterfly life cycle.

Both books would be fun additions to your bookshelf for younger kids starting to learn about different animals or who have an interest in insects.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Have you read?

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