This is a collection of folktales and creepy children’s stories out of Mexico (and out of Mexican-American communities in southern Texas). There are 14 stories in the collection, which is a bilingual collection – Spanish one direction for half the book, then flip it over for the English version on the other side. It is illustrated as well.

The stories, I admit, were not the best written. They felt like they talked down to children, but maybe I’m just not a fan of stories written for the 5-7 age group. It was a bit strange to have Young Reader level writing mixed with the horror that was in a lot of these stories, a lot of blood and shooting and fear.

Laurence read this collection in Spanish last year and still remembers a lot of it (thank you book reports!). He and I both agreed that many of the stories were strange, or had very abrupt endings, sometimes unexpected (and not necessarily in a good way). But we both also found a few of the stories creepy, in particular Llorona911 and Giggles the Clown. Laurence still finds the latter one creepy a year after reading the book. So I guess it was very effective that way.

It was a fun read, easy to read between chapters I was writing for NaNoWriMo. Not something I’ll remember forever, but an interesting look at some of the stories I’ve heard bits of over the years but never a full story. And it’s cool that my friend Joseph is friends with the author.