Picture Books

Foreword Review INDIES Multicultural Award, Silver
Texas Institute of Letters, Kay Cattarulla Award for Best Short Story
Best of Texas 2019, Lone Star Literary Life
Reading the West Award Nominee

How does a Mexican-American, the son of immigrants, a child of the border, la frontera, leave home and move to the heart of gringo America? How does he adapt to the worlds of wealth, elite universities, the rush and power of New York City? How does he make peace with a stern old-fashioned father who has only known hard field labor his whole life? With echoes of Dreiser's American Tragedy and Fitzgerald's Gatsby, Troncoso tells his luminous stories through the lens of an exile adrift in the 21st century, his characters suffering from the loss of culture and language, the loss of roots and home as they adapt to the glittering promises of new worlds which ultimately seem so empty.

Sergio Troncoso is the author of the collections A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son, The Last Tortilla and Other Stories, Crossing Borders: Personal Essays, and the novels The Nature of Truth and From This Wicked Patch of Dust. He's taught at the Yale Writers' Workshop for many years. Troncoso is President of the Texas Institute of Letters and a member of the Hispanic Scholarship Fund's Alumni Hall of Fame. A Fulbright scholar, he has won numerous awards, including the Kay Cattarulla Award for Best Short Story, International Latino Book Award, the Premio Aztlan Literary Prize, and the Southwest Book Award. He was born in El Paso, Texas, and attended Harvard College and Yale University, where he earned graduate degrees in international relations and philosophy.

A truly remarkable work of art that is already one of the most talked-about books of the season.

Tan's lovingly laid out and masterfully rendered tale about the immigrant experience is a documentary magically told. -- Art Spiegelman, author of MausAn absolute wonder. -- Marjane Satrapi, author of PersepolisA magical river of strangers and their stories! -- Craig Thompson, author of BlanketsA shockingly imaginative graphic novel that captures the sense of adventure and wonder that surrounds a new arrival on the shores of a shining new city. Wordless, but with perfect narrative flow, Tan gives us a story filled with cityscapes worthy of Winsor McCay. -- Jeff Smith, author of BoneShaun Tan's artwork creates a fantastical, hauntingly familiar atmosphere... Strange, moving, and beautiful. -- Jon J. Muth, Caldecott Medal-winning author of Zen ShortsBravo. -- Brian Selznick, Caldecott Medal-winning author of The Invention of Hugo CabretMagnificent. -- David Small, Caldecott Medalist

45th Anniversary Edition.

When it came to imagination, Benjamin Dilley was right up there with Einstein, Steve Jobs, and whoever came up with the idea for Disneyland. There wasn't anything Benjamin couldn't imagine, except maybe an honest politician or the idea of kissing a (ugh!) girl. Well, he could have if he'd wanted to I suppose but, gee, a guy has to draw the line somewhere!

Just about anything else was subject to his delightfully developed imagination, either in full color, black and white, 3D, with sound or without. As you will learn upon reading the story, this included a hippo dressed as an army general, a goat driving a sports car and a genie in (and out of) a bottle just to name a few.

Remember the days when you could do that? I still do it all the time, but folks seem to look at me a little strangely. They tend to say things like, "A little old for that kinda stuff, aren't you, pops?"

First edition, first printing of McCloskey's third book.Tan cloth with blue decorations.  Pages clean and unmarked; no dust jacket.  VG