Trini’s Magic Kitchen

 Written by Patricia Santos Marcantonio

 

ISBN: 979-8-89375-005-8

Format: Trade Paperback

Pages: 217

Imprint: Piñata Books

Ages: 10-15

 

Entertaining novel explores young girl’s family difficulties

alongside new adventures in the kitchen.

  

Trini has just started seventh grade in Denver when her mom loses her job. Money is scarce and they lose their apartment too. The girl must go live with her grandparents in Alamosa until her mother can find work and a place for them to live. She has always considered her grandparents’ house a second home, but the day her mom leaves her there she feels homeless.

Grandma Lydia and Grandpa Frank, who ride motorcycles and listen to rock, are the best, but Trini misses her mom and dreads being the new kid at school. Gradually she adjusts, making another best friend and setting her sights on a cute boy. And when her grandmother discovers Trini can’t cook, she begins teaching her granddaughter how to make traditional Mexican dishes. Through the cooking lessons, the girl learns more about her dad, who died when she was young, and why her mom doesn’t cook.

This warmhearted and entertaining novel about overcoming challenges will resonate with readers facing problems with family and friends. Recipes for the meals made by Trini and her grandparents—including tostadas, green chile enchiladas, calabacitas and albóndigas—are included and will encourage young people to begin their own adventures in the kitchen while learning the value of creating magical dishes for loved ones.

 

PATRICIA SANTOS MARCANTONIO is the author of Best Amigas (Fitzroy Books, 2023), Under the Blood Moon (Dark Ink, 2022), Felicity Carrol and the Murderous Menace (Crooked Lane Books, 2020), Felicity Carrol and the Perilous Pursuit (Crooked Lane Books, 2019), Verdict in the Desert (Arte Público Press, 2016) and Red Ridin’ in the Hood and Other Cuentos (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005). She lives and works in Boise, Idaho.

Poetry & Cookies 2025: Altadena Strong

Michael Sedano

Pauli Dutton

Altadena librarian, Pauli Dutton, invited a handful of local poets to read their work and share refreshments in a small intimate gathering. That was the first Poetry & Cookies. On Saturday, May 17, Altadena Library, and its Co-Poets Laureate, Sehba Sarwar and Lester Graves Lennon, hosted the 25th gathering of poets to read their work at Poetry & Cookies 2025.

Dutton’s initial years hosting P&C featured a spiral bound collection of the year’s readers. The relatively informal program grew to appoint a Poet Laureate, then Co-Poets Laureate, to host readings and publish the works as a retitled book, the Altadena Poetry Review Anthology (link). 

In recent years, the Laureates expanded the publication program to include an Online edition during the Co-Laureates’ first year, and a printed book in the culminating year. 

January’s Eaton Fire devoured Altadena but the fire didn’t stop life as we know it, nor poetry. Indeed, the Laureates extended the deadline for the Online edition so poets could submit fire poems. But the fire has delayed the process of editing the journal and, at the 2025 Poetry & Cookies reading, the Laureates announced August as the publication date for this year’s Online Edition of Altadena Poetry Review Anthology.

Golden Foothills Press has published the most recent volumes of the anthology. La Bloga spoke with the publisher, Thelma T. Reyna, herself an Altadena Poet Laureate Emerita, about the publication process. 

The Laureates issue the Call for Poetry in late Summer, early Fall. The poems arrive until January when the editing process begins. There are always glitches when mail and email systems fail, and disorganized or confused writers have questions and issues.

There’s some truth in the rude belief that organizing poets is like herding cats. Receiving poems is only part of the submission process. Getting biographies and photos from the selected-to-be-published poets takes on the look of feline shepherding.

Organizing contents consumes weeks to find the most elegant sequence of poems. Then the book designer steps in to layout the print and covers. When the artist is involved, the book is nearly ready to go to the printer and it’s time to schedule Poetry & Cookies and the anthology release.

This thumbnail sketch of the editor’s and publisher’s calendar only hints at the amount of labor that lies ahead for Lester Graves Lennon, who will edit Altadena Poetry Review Anthology 2026. 

Lennon, along with Co-Poet Laureate Sehba Sarwar, must have breathed sighs of joy and relief as their first year’s service culminated at this year’s Poetry & Cookies reading. Now begins the year of the book. 

Altadena Poet Laureate Lester Graves Lennon 

Altadena Poet Laureate Sehba Sarwar

Poetry & Cookies Readers

La Bloga apologizes for not securing all the names to go with the portraits

Altadena Library District Director
Nikki Winslow

Roberta H. Martinez

Toti O'Brien

Thelma T. Reyna

Carla Sameth

Richard Dutton

Seven Dhar 

Alicia Viguer-Espert

Carla Sameth and Sehba Sarwar, Laureate-emerita and current Co-Laureate

"Ante el río / Before the River" by Xánath Caraza

Ante el río por Xánath Caraza

 

¡¡¡Ay mis hijos!!!

 

¡¡¡ Ay jucheeti uachecha!!!

 

¡¡¡Ay mis hijos!!!

 

¡¡¡ Ay na noconehuaj!!!

 

Como llorona estoy ante el río

lamentándome por ti

niño perdido

 

¡Ay de mí! ¡Ay de mí! ¡Llorona!

 

Como lagarto estoy sobre las piedras

esperándote

en el río

 

Ave negra que nace del agua

que abre sus alas

y deja su historia salpicada

en el cauce del río

 

dejando surcos en su vuelo bajo

con su vientre pegado al río

trinar sobre mis oídos

rumor del agua

 

Bugambilias anaranjadas, fucsias, rosadas y blancas

que están en mis sueños y

me llenan la garganta

 

¡Ay de mí! ¡Ay de mí! ¡Llorona!

 

Eres tú el brujo y hechicero

que se mete en mis sueños

Con el agua te lavo

y te canto ante al río

 

¡Ay de mí! ¡Ay de mí! Niño perdido

 

Como Llorona estoy

ante el río

llévate mi tristeza niño hermoso

lava mis penas en el río

 

 

Before the River by Xánath Caraza

 

¡¡¡Ay mis hijos!!!

 

¡¡¡ Ay jucheeti uachecha!!!

 

¡¡¡Ay mis hijos!!!

 

¡¡¡ Ay na noconehuaj!!!

 

As Llorona I am before the river

moaning for you

niño perdido

 

¡Ay de mí! ¡Ay de mí! ¡Llorona!

 

As an alligator I am on the river stones

waiting for you

in the river

 

Black bird born of the water

opens its wings

and leaves its history sprinkled

by the flow of the river

 

leaves tracks in its low flight

with its underside close to the river

singing above my ears

murmuring of water

 

Orange, fuchsia, pink and white bougainvilleas

are in my dreams and

fill my throat

 

¡Ay de mí! ¡Ay de mí! ¡Llorona!

 

You are the wizard and sorcerer

who enters into my dreams

with water I wash you

and I sing to you before the river

 

¡Ay de mí! ¡Ay de mí! Niño perdido

 

As Llorona I am

before the river

take my sadness with you beautiful niño

wash my sorrows in the river

 

Xanath Caraza

“Ante el río / Before the River” is part of the collection of poetry Conjuro (Mammoth Publications, 2012). “Ante el río / Before the River” was featured at the Smithsonian Latino Center in 2018. Listen to my Spanish (Purepecha and Nahuatl) and English version of the poem here, and also Son Jarocho singer Silvia Santos’ interpretation of my poem.

Focus on an Independent Press

Today's La Bloga is a quick look at an independent and highly regarded publisher -- Seven Stories Press.  A thorough summary of the history of the press can be found here.  Below is information about two recent books published by Seven Stories.  The books are quite different, one is historical nonfiction and the other is art criticism, but they share high quality presentations and a revolutionary world view.  Seven Stories has been publishing similar books for more than thirty years.  Thank you, Seven Stories.

____________________________________

Latin America Diaries
Ernesto Che Guevara

Seven Stories Press - May 12

[from the publisher]
The sequel to The Motorcycle Diaries, this book is Ernesto Che Guevera's journal documenting the young Argentine's second trip through Latin America, revealing the emergence of a committed revolutionary.

These letters, poetry, and journalism document young Ernesto Guevara's second Latin American journey following his graduation from medical school in 1953. Together, these writings reveal how the young Argentine is transformed into a militant revolutionary.

After traveling through Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Central America, Ernesto witnesses the 1954 US-inspired coup in Guatemala, which has a profound effect on his political awareness. He flees to Mexico where he encounters Fidel Castro, marking the beginning of a political partnership that profoundly changes the world and Che himself. Includes a foreword by Alberto Granado, Che's companion on his first adventures in Latin America on a vintage Norton motorcycle, and features poems written by young Ernesto inspired by his experiences along with facsimiles of pages from his diary.

____________________

Theory of the Rearguard:
How to Survive Contemporary Art (and Almost Everything Else)
Iván de la Nuez, translated by Ellen Jones
Seven Stories Press - May 15

[from the publisher]
Theory of the Rearguard examines how contemporary art is in tension with survival, rather than in relation to life. In the twentieth century, Peter Bürger’s Theory of the Avant-Garde was a cult book focused on the two main tasks that art demanded at the time: to break its representation and to destroy the barrier that separated it from life.

Forty years later, The Theory of the Rearguard is an ironic manifesto about contemporary art and its failures, even though Iván de la Nuez does not waste his time mourning it or disguising it. He argues that our times are not characterized by the distance between art and life, but by a tension between art and survival, which is the continuation of life by any means necessary.

In the twenty-first century, Iván de la Nuez examines art in relationship to politics, iconography, and literature. This austere and sharp book—in which Duchamp stumbles upon Lupe, the revolution upon the museum, Paul Virilio upon Joan Fontcuberta or Fukuyama upon Michael Jackson—wonders if contemporary art will ever end. Because if it were mortal—“just as mortal as everything it invokes or examines under its magnifying glass”—de la Nuez argues would be worth writing an epitaph for it as he has done in this sparkling book of art criticism.

Later.

___________________

Manuel Ramos writes crime fiction.

Chicanonautica: Notes on a Xicanxfuturist Spring

by Ernest Hogan

Once again, we got a whole lotta transmogrification going on. And it’s not just the loco-in-chief in the White House. All kinds of changes are happening.

We’re talking way beyond future shock here. As if just being a humble Xicanxfuturist sciifista trying to survive in a world that never was sure about what it should do with me wasn’t enough.

I don’t know what to do with my new novel. Or all the short stories that weird circumstances keep squeezing out of me.

An abandoned shopping mall is undergoing a transformation into . . . What? A metaphor for a new world?

Things I experience keep sending my grotesquely overactive imagination off into bizarre tangents.

It’s better than any drug.

I don’t need AIs to hallucinate for me.

Who’da thought that hallucinating algorithms would be a thing?

Tezcatlipoca, Tezcatlipoca, do you read?

Is there a Mission Control?

What is the mission?

Just a Chicanonaut reporting in to . . .

Who? Us? Them? The entire universe?

So I keep going. I can’t help it. I can’t turn the monster in my brain off . . .

Besides, I believe that we need all this weird shit, now more than ever. 

Sure, I feel like the guy in that meme with the world in flames, screaming, “Hey, anybody want to buy a book?” But it’s books, art, music . . . La Cultura! That gets us through this.

It’s not the cozy escapism that gives us the inspiration to do what we have to do to survive, it’s the rasquache kicks in the head that shatter the living nightmare and make better things possible.

Really.

So here I go.

This has been a pep talk from the Father of Chicano Science Fiction.

Ernest Hogan is feasting on the madness that surrounds him, getting ready to teach a class on what he does, so he has to analyze it, which leads to astounding revelations . . .

¿Qué es un poema? / What Is a Poem?

Text and illustrations by Jovi de la Jara

ISBN: 979-8-89375-016-4
Publication Date: May 31, 2025
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 32
Imprint: Piñata Books
Ages: 4-8

Whimsical bilingual picture book shares the wonder of poetry

In this playful bilingual picture book for children, the author describes all the things a poem can do, like: “Puppies can be / planets / and flowers / can be kittens” and “the moon can be / square / and rain can be / laughter.”

Simple text describes the endless possibilities available in writing poetry; words can rhyme, run off the page or even be invented! Poems can be very long or super short. Jovi de la Jara’s fun black-and-white illustrations cleverly depict the humorous ideas: a dog’s face looks like a planet with a ring around it, flowers sprout cat faces and a cloud cries laughter. These original and sometimes abstract images will surely ignite kids’ imaginations!

This entertaining book is perfect for sharing the joy of writing poetry with young readers. Kids will be encouraged to explore the world around them and come up with their own inventive creations as they realize, “The poem is a mirror inside your head.”

“Effectively minimalist, it’s a creative multilingual exploration of the possibilities of line and verse.”—Publishers Weekly

JOVI DE LA JARA was born in the south of Chile, but lives in Houston where he is completing his PhD in Creative Writing in Spanish at the University of Houston.