Little Gold Star/
Estrellita de Oro A Cinderella Cuento
by Joe Hayes; illustrated by Gloria Osuna Perez and Lucia Angela Perez
Cinco Puntos Press, 32 pp., $15.95
Most of us probably don’t remember Cinderella eating Mexican pan dulce and wearing a shiny gold star on her forehead, but that’s exactly what the fairy-tale maiden does in Joe Hayes’ bilingual retelling of the myth in his children’s book Little Gold Star/Estrellita de Oro. Based on legends brought to the Americas by Spanish settlers, the book tells of a young girl named Arcia who begs her father to marry their single neighbor after her own mother dies. Against his father’s true wishes, he weds the neighbor and moves in with her and her two mean-spirited daughters. One day, while Arcia is washing the wool she will use to make a blanket for her father, a hawk swoops down and snatches it from her hands. When she looks up into the sky, a star falls from the heavens and affixes it to her face forever. Jealous, her two sisters try to get stars on their foreheads, too, but end up with an embarrassing donkey ear and a cow horn instead. When the prince of the land holds a fancy ball, he falls in love with the light shining from Arcia’s starry face. The rest, of course, is history. While the plot generally follows the traditional Cinderella tale to which readers are accustomed, the deviances and cultural flavors make the book a captivating read for children and adults. With its Spanish version of the story on opposite pages of the English text, the book also serves as a useful tool for English-speaking children between the ages of, say, three and five who are learning the early fundamentals of the ever-delicious Spanish language. And Gloria Osuna Perez and Lucia Angela Perez’s lush, vibrant illustrations will make Arcia’s vida loca that much more fun.
This article appears in July 28 • 2000.