Runaway Tortilla

Award-winning author Eric A. Kimmel is a native of New York who taught teachers as a professor of Education at Indiana University at South Bend and Portland State University. His favorite classes were children’s literature, language arts, storytelling, and handwriting. He left the university in 1993 to become a full-time writer, a dream he had had since kindergarten. Eric has written more than fifty books and has won numerous awards, including the Caldecott Honor Medal. He and his wife, Doris, live in Portland, Oregon. ericakimmel.comErik Brooks is the author and illustrator of many books for children, including the Washington State Book Award winner, Polar Opposites, and the CBC/IRA Children’s Choices Award winner, The Practically Perfect Pajamas. His most recent illustrated book, Sea Star Wishes, was selected as the July 2013 “Book of the Month” by US Children’s Poet Laureate, Kenn Nesbitt. From his home in Winthrop, Washington, Erik also writes and draws Harts Pass, a weekly comic strip for the Methow Valley News, visits schools and libraries around the country, and plays in the woods like a wolverine! erikbrooks.blogspot.com

"Perfection can be dangerous, as restaurateurs Tía Lupe and Tío José discover when one of their delicious tortillas comes to life and runs away. The handmade tortillas, "light as a cloud and as soft as the fuzz on a baby's cheek," are so gravity-defying that one takes off, pursued at first by the couple, and then by a parade of conejos (rabbits), sapos cornudos (lizards), vaqueros (cowboys), and other locals. The story should sound familiar; it's a Spanish-sprinkled update of The Gingerbread Man....The text is energetic, and the baked-in Spanish avoids feeling dumbed down; it's placed so well in context that non-Spanish-speaking readers won't feel lost. The illustrations evocatively convey the cacti, sand-beached rubble, and reptilian fauna of the Southwest as well as the crispy-masa body of the tortilla herself...Anyone who's ever driven across town for the perfect taco will understand the allure of the world's most entertaining tortilla." –Kirkus Reviews