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.

After sharing some witch themed math activities, I found a bunch more fun printable worksheets with a Halloween theme for kids to try, so let’s take a look at some more low-prep Halloween learning fun.

Give kids practice measuring bats, spiders, ghosts and more with these printables from What I Have Learned Teaching. Kids can use a ruler, unit cubes or even little Halloween themed erasers to measure and track the size of the images.

Practice symmetry by drawing half a haunted house, ghost, skull or other simple images with this activity from Printables Hub.

I always love a good roll and draw activity, too, so check out this roll and draw a ghost activity (which has printable instructions) from Finding Myself Young.

Missy Printable Design has a cute set of Halloween worksheets for preschool, including tracing the letter H and a haunted house, spider counting, number tracing, sequencing, coloring pages and more.

The Halloween themed printables from The Artisan Life are meant to be playdough mats, and you can definitely use them for that to make the shape and trace the letters. But you could also use pipe cleaners or Wikki Stix, or line up buttons or anything else on them.

Older kids will enjoy this witch’s brew logic puzzle from Education.com. The witch has made different potions with different colors that do different things, and using the clues you can figure out which one is which. (Don’t worry; there’s an answer key included if you can’t figure it out on your own!)

Another fun puzzle is this decoder activity from Crafting Cheerfully. The holiday icons each represent a letter, and kids can use the decoder to answer the riddle. This isn’t a free resource (and the link in the post is broken but you can find it here) but it includes 20 riddles and an editable file so you can make up your own codes to decipher.

Have you read?

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