WHEN WE VISIT ABUELO, I HELP HIM SELL FRUTAS.

WE SING THE NAMES OF EACH FRUIT AS WE CHANT WITH A RHYTHM.

Down the street with her grandfather pushing a cart filled with many varieties, they sing the song of their sweet juicy wares....

"MANGO, LIMON, COCO, MELON..."

Pineapples, bananas, oranges, grapefruits and limes crowd the cart at first, but from their balconies, people let down their baskets with money for their choices and pull them up for waiting children to grab. Along the street the other vendors sing their wares, from eggs to dustpans, tamales to brooms....

BEST OF ALL IS LA DULCERA, WHO CROONS SO SWEETLY IN PRAISE OF HER CHOCOLATES AND OTHER CANDIES.

Narrated by a little girl who only can visit her grandparents annually during the New Year's holiday, she describes how, between times, she lovingly keeps in touch by letter that fly between her home in the north and Cuba.

WE CAN SING RHYMES BACK AND FORTH, VERSES ON PAPER, A HUG MADE OF WORDS.

When I was in fifth grade, our vocal music songbook had a section titled "Songs of Our Land," and several were the musical calls of street vendors. The only one I can remember was, according to the caption, a Charleston, South Carolina song, "Barcolingo, Watermelon," which featured four rhythmic claps, and advertised "water-mel-lions, col' as ice, ber-ry nice...."  And that summer, believe it or not, a man carrying a tray of little baskets of strawberries came walking down my street, singing "Straw... straw... straw BEE-RIES!'" I thought, "That's a real street vendor call!" My worlds were colliding!

But although most American children won't hear  street vendors musically calling their wares, they have the new story book by the award-winning author Margarita Engle and artist Sara Palacios, A Song of Frutas (Atheneum Books, 2021), with sellers singing the delights of sweet summery fruits for sale for people who let down baskets and pull them up with fresh-picked delights.

Author Engle's cheery "Spanglish" songs of holiday food are universal and Sara Palacio's bright and tropically sunny illustrations offer youngsters a wider view of holiday events with a touch of sadness for the separation of families. 

Says Horn Book Magazine, "Engle’s text is rich in sensory details . . . Palacios’s digital illustrations are characterized by soft lines and warm colors that augment the positive mood throughout. . . Fond reminiscences and a nuanced cultural depiction make for another warm ode to Engle’s beloved isla."

Messin' With the Rhyme Scheme: Nothing Rhymes With Orange by Adam Rex

Sure, Orange has that one claim to fame. He's got an major fruit named after him. It is a bit of a distinction. After all, nobody calls a banana a "yellow."

But in the world of fruit, Orange has a hard gig. Being the color of highway warning signs and traffic cones doesn't build much of a fan base. And being practically un-rhymable, Orange is pretty much left out of the coveted end-of-line position in versification.

When there's a sunny fruit tale to be told,
Orange is left out alone in the cold.

HIT THE BEACH IN YOUR CABANA

WITH A PEACH OR A BANANA.

Hey! How much worse than that rhyme can it get? Orange is ready to audition for any line in this book. I mean, when this author stoops to rhyming cantaloupe with "antelope," how picky can he be? And anyway, a kid doesn't have to be dense not to know what a quince is!

And get a load of this seriously forced quatrain!

I THINK CHERRIES ARE THE BERRIES
AND LYCHEE IS JUST PEACHY.

THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA
IN A BOOK BY FREDRICH NIETZCHE

[SIGH!]

What's a cute fruit, nutrish and delish, got to do to get at least a walk-on line in this book?

At least author-illustrator Adam Rex gives the sadly neglected but colorful orange top billing in the title, in his latest, Nothing Rhymes with Orange (Chronicle Books, 2017). The author takes silliness seriously, and his artwork is no less playful, filled with fruity characters (and a bearded Fred Nietzche) with stick limbs and expressive faces that finish with a fruit bowl turn-over party. This is a great goofy book with comic characters for preschoolers, but for learned primary schoolers, the wry and sly wordplay with rhyme and rhythm is quite sophisticated, with a humorous nod to philosopher-savvy adults who get the good fortune to read this one aloud.

As a creator, Adam Rex has a genius for playing with the concepts of language and literature, as displayed in his spiffy spoof of the toddler bedtime classic Goodnight Moon in his parody classic Goodnight Goon: a Petrifying Parody, (see my 2008 review here.) And then there are last year's back-to-school hit, School's First Day of School, (review here) and this spring's hit done with Drew Daywalt, The Legend of Rock Paper Scissors. (see review here,) all off-beat and all hard to beat.

Thus spake Booklist: "Cheers for not only nutrition but for thinking outside the bowl to include the unfairly marginalized."