Book Review: The Dia de Los Muertos Story

Dia de Los Muertos might seem like a fun holiday full of sugar skulls and colorful cut paper banners, but its origins are more serious as a way to honor and remember the dead.

The Dia de Los Muretos Story by Andrea Jáuregui de la Torre and illustrated by Laura González shares the history and traditions of the day without making it scary. It describes the day as beginning in the Aztec civilization as long as 3,000 years ago.

The Aztecs celebrated their dead about six times a year. They had specific celebrations honoring children who had died as well as adults, and there were banquets and gifts to the gods in honor of those who had passed.

When the Spanish arrived in Mexico and many people converted to Catholicism, the traditions of All Saints and All Souls Day (which honor the dead who have become saints as well as others who have passed on) got mixed with the Aztec tradition and became Dia de Los Muertos.

Preparations for the holiday include cleaning the house and making an altar for the ofrendas or offerings for the dead. The cut paper decorations, known as papel picado, also come from an Aztec tradition of cutting paper (their paper was made from tree bark). These decorations represent air, and other things on and around the altar represent other elements such as a cup of water, candles for fire and food for earth.

Special foods include not only sugar skulls but also conchas (a sweet bread), pan de muertos (bread decorated with a cross), tamales and mole, among others. The book talks about other symbols used for Dia de Los Muertos including marigolds and skeletons, and explores why you might see a party in a cemetery on the holiday.

The book is full of lovely illustrations and includes a timeline of how Dia de Los Muertos has evolved and been recognized around the world.

This would be a nice book to read if you have Mexican children in your classroom or if the day is celebrated in your community to help other kids understand what it’s about. And even if those things aren’t true it’s fun for kids of all backgrounds to learn about other cultures and their meaningful holidays.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover paper over boards. Published 2025 by becker & mayer kids. Suggested retail price $18.99. Available in Spanish and English.

My brother went through a phase where he was obsessed with maps. He loved to look at maps and he would draw maps of places real and imagined. He even drew maps that followed our route when we’d go to visit our grandparents in another state!

I assume there are still kids who go through map phases, and kids with an interest in history and how things got to be the way they are. Both kinds of kids will enjoy the book Borders: Understanding the Lines that Unite and Separate Us by Karim Ressouni-Demigneux, with illustrations by Karine Maincent.

The book describes how the original borders were natural, such as oceans, rivers, mountains and deserts, and while some of those borders are still in use today, many borders are human made, decided by treaties or carved out by colonizers. It covers the history of people congregating in one place and how city-states evolved into empires, how maps are drawn and how human conflicts can reshape borders.

There are stories about walls that reinforce borders, how borders work in the air and at sea, how people cross borders with passports or as refugees and how climate change is altering the borders of some countries.

You’ll also learn some fun border facts like the fact that if you stand in the middle of the bridge over the Zambezi River you can be in four countries at once because that’s where the borders of Botswana, Zambia, Namibia and Zimbabwe meet. Or how there is only one border crossing between India and Pakistan that’s closed each night in an elaborate ceremony.

The book talks about time zones, border towns and places where countries and parts of countries are inside other countries and places where borders are less important such as the European Union.

While there are serious subjects in the book, it’s still a fun read that’s sure to interest those kids around ages 8-12 who like travel, maps and weird but true facts.

About the book: 72 pages, hardcover, published 2026 by Blue Dot Kids Press. Suggested retail price $21.95.

Have you read?

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