review

Revolución en el Recreo / Recess Revolution
a bilingual (Spanish/English) children's paperback
written by Pat Alvarado, illustrated by Andrea E. Alvarado
Piggy Press (Panama) 2003 (www.piggypress.com)
($8 retail in Panama, but teachers should contact the publisher at info@piggypress.com because there are discounts for educators and for schools buying in bulk)


“Recess Revolution” confirms Pat Alvarado’s status as the most prolific English-language book author in Panama. This bilingual children’s book, in some respects a refinement of her earlier “Ben’s Brigade,” also ought to earn her a bit more stature in the field of children’s literature throughout the English- and Spanish-speaking worlds.

Basically this is a story of a fifth grader who goes to a new school and encounters a bully who with a few lackies runs a shakedown racket. The stakes are lunch money and dignity. The tale gets into underground organization and the dangers that betrayal and laziness can pose to such enterprises, crime, punishment, morality, adult authority, the teachings of Benjamin Franklin and just a dab of class violence.

This book, along with Eduardo Lince Fábrega’s “El Bosque Escondido,” a Spanish-language children’s fantasy and morality tale, was the subject of a double book presentation at Excedra Books on April 9. A large crowd showed up, and though it included family and friends of both writers, mainly it was a demonstration that despite economic pressures that have lowered private school enrollments in recent years, the Panamanian middle class places high priority on the education of its children.

“Recess Revolution” is neither strident nor dogmatic, and Alvarado herself stays away from political controversies. Yet the book is in its own indirect way about Columbine, Saddam Hussein vs. George W. Bush, lynching, Panamanian juega vivo, the punishment and redemption of criminals and those annoying Panama City street blockades. That’s because a good teacher can use this story as a starting point to discuss those extreme examples of the general themes that are raised within.

Because it’s bilingual, this book will also be useful for the teaching of English to young Panamanians, which is a popular cause here at the moment, and the teaching of Spanish to young Americans, something that gets sneered at all too much in the climate of xenophobia that has swept across the USA lately.

Will it pass muster before the powers that be in either place? In Panama the problem is that Pat Alvarado is only a talented writer and educator and past president of the local chapter of the National League of American Pen Women, while the best credentials to get a book into the public schools here are based on the family or partisan ties that she lacks. In the US, the problem is that well organized groups of alleged Christian conservatives spend a lot of time and money lobbying state governments to keep books that encourage thinking out of the public schools. Let’s hope that the hurdles can be surmounted. “Recess Revolution” belongs in the schools.

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