In honor of Latinx Heritage Month, we set out to find a fun, energetic children's book that would expose students to aspects of Latinx culture and Spanish words. For our second-grade students, "Niño Wrestles the World" by Yuyi Morales was the perfect match.
According to the School Libary Journal, ". . .readers see a boy playing with his toys, including a Lucha libre wrestling ring with masked wrestler toys. One by one, Niño faces and defeats his formidable opponents: The Mummy of Guanajuato, the stone Olmec Head, La Llorona, the Alien, and the devil-like El Chamuco. But when his little sisters wake up from their naps, he faces his biggest challenge yet: Las Hermanitas. Everything about this book is well integrated and thought out: The endpapers are decorated with baseball-card-style information on each of Niño's opponents, including phonetic spellings of their Spanish names. Spanish words and phrases appear throughout, but they are easily understood in context. An author's note gives some background information about Lucha libre and its popularity in Mexico. This is a near-perfect book, and absolutely essential for any collection."
"Niño Wrestles the World" is full of fantastic illustrations, style, culture, and its high quality makes it a perfect addition to The Spark Foundation's list of Approved Books. On behalf of our supporters, we are excited to present a copy of our October Book of the Month to each second-grade student at McKinley Elementary in Des Moines, Iowa.