Picturebook Analysis: Critical Perspectives

Book: La Frontera: El viaje con papa / My Journey with Papa*

By Deborah Mills, Alfredo Alva, Claudia Navarro (Illustrator)
The story is about a young boy who struggles during his journey to the United States and
adopting to a new country. He leaves his family behind and struggles to fit in at school.

In the illustration of Alfredo’s family, we can see by the look of the adult’s faces how
worried they are that they don’t have enough money to feed themselves and their children. His
grandfather is too old to work and his dad cannot making a living by himself. Alfredo and his
siblings would sometimes go hungry because their parents didn’t have the means to pay for
food, but he didn’t understand why they had to leave. Since Alfredo was the oldest of his
siblings, he had to make the trip with his dad to “the north”. We can also see how worried and
sad Alfredo is from having to say goodbye to his family and pet donkey. His mother was
heartbroken because they wouldn’t see each other for many years.

ALFREDO’S FATHER REALIZE HE CANNOT ALFREDO’S MOTHER IS SAYING

STAY THERE IF HE WANTS TO PROVIDE GOODBYE, NOT KNOWING WHEN THEY’LL
FOR HIS FAMILY SEE EACH OTHER AGAIN.

Alfredo is shown in the images as a young boy and his grandfather and dad as ranchers.
You can see how his parents and grandfather struggled to provide food for the family because
even Alfredo had to work to bring food to the table. At school, he notices he is the only
Mexican kid in school and feels like he doesn’t belong. His represents the struggles of
immigrant children who are sent to school and have a difficult time communicating with his
peers and their teachers.
 ALFREDO WORKING WITH HIS
GRANDFATHER ALFREDO FEELING ALONE

When Alfredo went to school for the first time in America, he felt uncomfortable
because he didn’t speak English and his peers and teacher couldn’t communicate with him. He
knew the other kids were talking about him when they would turn around to look at him. There
wasn’t a teacher in the building that could speak Spanish or a student that he could talk to.
When a teacher finally sends a popular kids that’s two years older than him to talk to him, other
kids also start talking to him. By talking to him, he was slowly learning English and was finally
able to interact with his peers. The teacher also started to help him learn English. These are
everyday experiences from immigrant children who come to America. Many times they are put
into a school where they don’t get a teacher that speaks their language. These teachers might
also not attempt to teach them because they feel like it’s useless. Not only does it make
learning English harder for them, but they don’t start to feel welcomed or comfortable.

In this country today, there is so much controversy on immigration reform and the
treatment of immigrants. They’re seen as people who come to this country to steal American
jobs. They’re separated from their families if they are caught by immigration and children are
often neglected and mistreated. The treatment of immigrants are compared to the Holocaust
due to the poor and harsh conditions.

Debbie Mills is the author and she wanted to share the moving story of a Mexican
stonemason she met when she moved to Kerrville, Texas in 2007. That is where she met
Alfredo Alva and his family and they became friends. One day they joined his family for a BBQ
and Debbie asked Alfredo to share his story of how he migrated from Mexico and settled in the
United States. She was inspired by his story to write La Frontera: El viaje con papa / My
Journey with Papa.
 These five elements impact the reading process because you get to examine every part
of the book. We see how important every element of the book impact the message and
meaning. The words in the story only helps us imagine the story, but the illustrations show us
what we could be missing from just reading or listening to the text. The characters and
storyline relationships in this story shows us what Alfredo experiences when coming to America
and showed us the pain of a mother seeing her son leave. This element is critical because it
goes in depth with the story and explains how characters feel and interact with each other.
Examining social change is important because we might not think a book has a meaningful
message until we compare it to current events. Without realizing it, a story from a few decades
can be relevant in today’s society. It may not click to the reader if they aren’t going though the
character’s story, but if they take their time to research the story they’ll realize that the story
effects other people in current society. For a reader to be self-aware means that they can
encourage a change in our community or society. Just like for a reader to connect it to social
change, we also have the recognize the past and connect it to social eras. It’s important to
understand history in story books because we want the younger generations to understand the
importance of an event and why it should be avoided in the future. The history included in
books can still be reverent in the present and it’s also an eyeopener for the reader to see how
much something has changed or not changed. Lastly, it’s important to understand the
perspective from the author because they could be writing about their lives or the lives of
something important. If the author is writing a story about themselves, then they are giving us
the story in their eyes and how they experiences an event. However, if the author is writing a
story about someone else, then we can understand that it’s being written from someone else’s
perspective. The author was also driven for a purpose to write the story. We need to
understand if they wrote the story to inform others, to makes others aware of an issue or if they
wrote it just for entertainment. The driven force of writing the book could change how we
interpret the entire story.

ALFREDO AND DEBBIE (AUTHOR)

SOON AFTER PRESIDENT REAGAN PASSED THE AMNESTY FOR
ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS HE WAS ABLE TO START THE LONG
PROCESS OF BECOMING A CITIZEN . FOUR YEARS LATER, HIS
DAD PICKED HIM UP FROM SCHOOL AND TOLD HIM THAT
THEY’LL BE MAKING A TRIP TO THE BOARDER OF EL PASO. HE
WASN’T EXCITED BECAUSE OF HIS LAST EXPERIENCE, BUT HIS
DAD TOLD HIM HE WOULDN’T HAVE TO WALK LIKE LAST TIME.
WHEN HE ARRIVED TO EL PASO, HE WAS SURPRISED TO SEE
HIS MOM, HIS SIBLINGS AND HIS GRANDFATHER. HIS FAMILY
WAS FINALLY TOGETHER AGAIN.