Migrar

Migrar is a children's book by Javier Martínez Pedro . It was published in 2011 in Mexico in Spanish by Ediciónes Tecolote. The story is based on a text by the Mexican poet José Manuel Mateo. The German edition will be published by Edition Orient in August 2015 .

The picture book won the Bologna Ragazzi Award (2012) and the White Raven of the international youth library (2013).

The picture book is also a leporello book . This is not leafed through from left to right like a classic book, but read vertically from top to bottom with a single, nine-fold folded, single-sided page.

Pedro made the illustrations for the book on traditional Amatl paper. This has been made in Mexico since pre-Hispanic times by superimposing layers of specially prepared tree bark. Javier Martínez Pedro is one of the most important artists of illustration on tree bark paper, which he also produces himself.

content

Migrar tells the story of a family who illegally immigrated to Los Angeles from a rural village in Mexico . The story is told from the perspective of a little boy.

The story begins with the boy talking about his home village. The people there are farmers and live from what they grow. The land is not their own, but they treat it as if it were. But then life in the village begins to change. More and more men are leaving the village to find work in the USA. Many come back to catch up with their families.

Pedro's father also goes to the USA and sends money to his family from there. When at some point no more money arrives, Pedro's family has no choice but to leave their home village and dare to travel to the USA, which is associated with some dangers.

Pedro, his sister and his mother jump on a train and unlike some others who are caught or “disappear” on the journey, they manage to arrive in Los Angeles. There they find a job in the cleaning trade, but their future remains uncertain and at the end of the book they haven't found their father either.