Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1336881 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-23
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 80 pages

From School Library Journal
Grade 2-4-When nine-year-old Gloria's mama has to work at a fancy hotel on Christmas, the girl must spend the day there as well, since Papi is away picking oranges. After work, the resentful child accompanies her mother across the border into Mexico, where her grandmother lives in a ramshackle hut. She sulks until the enormous wellspring of love she receives from Mama and Nana, not to mention the homemade gifts, reminds her of how much she really has, despite her family's poverty. This account of one girl's Christmas could have been saccharine or preachy, but the tone is matter-of-fact and engaging, and Gloria is an appealing character.-E. M.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Gr. 2-5. Gloria hates it when she has to go with her mother to work on Christmas Day in the fancy hotel where Mama has a job cleaning the bathrooms. At first Gloria is dazzled by the hotel luxury, but she's warned not to touch the buffet feast, and she's ashamed when a rich kid pities her as a "have-not." She's still upset after work when she and Mama join Nana in her rough cardboard house, which has no electricity, just over the border in Mexico. But, as they celebrate Feliz Navidad together, and Gloria opens her wonderful gift from Papa (who's a "migrant," away working in the fields on the holiday), she realizes that the love in her family makes her rich. The neat uplifting story doesn't have the wrenching beauty of Francisco Jimenez's autobiographical The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child (1997), which is for older readers, but this small chapter-book with moving, realistic black-and-white illustrations does bring home the painful truth about class differences, a subject seldom addressed in children's books. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

A Heartwarming Christmas Story of Two Cultures
Carolyn Marsden gets into the skin of her protagonist, Gloria, when on Christmas she must tag along with her mother to her job at the hotel where a sumptuous feast is arrayed in the hotel dining room while Gloria observes the contrast of preparation for others in the kitchen. When she accidentally interacts with a child of one of the guests in the dining room, they find they giggle at the same things until cut short by the girl's parent. Gloria relays to her doll her frustration and sadness that her family's Christmas must be delayed. But finally arriving at her grandmother's and discovering a special gift her Papi, also working on Christmas, had planned for her, Gloria savors their Feliz Navidad at last.