Pepita Takes Time / Pepita, Siempre Tarde [Spanish]

Icy Watermelon by Mary Sue Galindo is a wonderful book for young children. It has a gentle, warm, loving, family-oriented tone. While my children are now grown, this is the type of book I liked to read to them when they were young. It's engaging to the young child because of a riddle and it uses hints with senses- color, taste, size, and other characteristics that help the child guess what the surprise is. The family shared activity of sitting on the porch, talking, eating watermelon, listening to the grandparents' story of how they met, and planning together to save the seeds to plant, demonstrates a healthy communal way of spending time together in an unhurried manner for the different generations. The illustrations are wonderful using warm colors and smiling, loving characters. The book is bilingual (Spanish) on each page and comes with a CD. For those looking for a book that shows healthy, gentle, loving, family-oriented activities, this is a great book to get.

This book talks about a very common event happening among Latino families when they gather together to see the "atardecer" (sunset) after eating around 3 or 4 pm, which is the main meal. The narrator describes a pretty scene when three generations (grandparents, parents and children) enjoy a sliced, sweet and cold watermelon and talk about stories in the past like how abuelos meet long time ago, when abuelo's father raised watermelon and how he helped his father selling them, that was how grandfather meet grandmother. This very creative story describes a beautiful Sunday and the conversations, jokes and laughter among a Latino family. A beautiful book recommended to be read among every family in the US.