Book Review: Canto Familiar
Soto, Gary. Illus. by Annika Nelson. 1995. Canto Familiar. New York: Harcourt.
ISBN: 0152000674
Ages 9–12
Gary Soto works in both children and young adult genres. His Canto Familiar is a wonderfully written small book of poetry, about the common everyday things one knows and loves. These poems highlight some of the physical points of familiarity in Soto’s life. His relationship to real world items are both cultural markers for Mexican American children who will know what Menudo and Tortillas are, and what a Serape feels like.
Others who read the story are also going to get a sense of what Soto is describing even if they don’t know the words in Spanish. The sense of the thing is there for every reader. Soto does not consistently code switch in these poems but he mixes in terms that would be useful to beginners thinking about learning the Spanish language. They are the familiar, the common, and the usable.
Soto also looks at the universally familiar with his poem “Left Shoe on the Right Foot,” where boys put their shoes on wrong and try to move around doing ordinary things like kicking a soccer ball around. Many children may share the experience of having eyeglasses, and in the poem “Eyeglasses” Soto highlights that feeling of not wanting to wear them, not wanting to be teased, while at the same…
