Juana and Lucas: A Book Review

       Juana and Lucas is a Newberry Award winning book by Juana Medina from Candlewick Press.  It is a book that is an important addition for your classroom library.
     In Bogota´, Colombia lives a young girl name Juana. She loves her dog Lucas, comic books and space, but she hates learning English.  Throughout the beginning of the book we learn about Juana's day to day adventures, with a voice of a child trying to make sense of the world.  Her abuelo, a brain surgeon, tries to convince Juana about the usefulness of learning another language.  He even goes as far to bribe Juana that if she learns English he will take her to Spaceland in Florida.
          What I truly love about this book is that although learning English is a featured plot point, it is not the sole driver of the story.  For Juana, learning English does not come at the expense of her Spanish.  The language Medina uses, captures the mischievous nature of childhood in both languages.  The illustrations are equally playful.
          In addition, it does not fall into the "white teacher/immigrant child" trope that is prevalent in children't literature about bilingual children. Immigrant stories are important, when written from the lens of the immigrant. However,  this is not necessarily the story of our international students who are learning English.   An English language learner's experience in an international school is very different then the experience of an immigrant and/or refugee's.  I think this is important as many expatriates are guests in another country; we should not bring our North American (and British and Australian) baggage to a context different then the ones we are from. English language learners are a diverse body of experiences, not one monolithic entity.
          The diversity of stories are important in our curriculum's goals of global mindedness. Juana and Lucas approaches storytelling with additive bilingualism.

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