In their debut picture book, Frederick Luis Aldama and Chris Escobar invite young readers along on the adventures of Chupacabra Charlie, a polite, handsome, and unusually tall ten-year-old chupacabra yearning for adventure beyond the edge of los Estados Unidos. Little does Charlie know when he befriends a young human, Lupe, that together, with only some leftover bacon quesadillas and a few cans of Jumex, they might just encounter more adventure than they can handle. Along the way, they meet strange people and terrifying danger, and their bravery will be put to the test. Thankfully, Charlie is a reassuring and winsome companion who never doubts that he and Lupe will return safely home. 
With magical realism, allegory, and gentle humor, Aldama and Escobar have created a story that will resonate with young and old readers alike as it incorporates folklore into its subtle take on the current humanitarian crisis at the border.
 

This book shines a new light on J. E. Casely Hayford’s Ethiopia Unbound, widely considered the first English-language novel published by an African writer. Casely Hayford drew material from his eminent career as a barrister, statesman, and newspaper editor to augment the book’s fictional elements, showcasing the tremendous intellectual versatility of West Africa. Moving between London and the Gold Coast, as well as across the past, present, and imagined future of Casely Hayford’s Fante civilization, Ethiopia Unbound is an essential record of how Africans at the turn of the twentieth century made sense of their place in a rapidly changing world.

Chupacabra Charlie es un chupacabras de diez años educado, guapo e inusualmente alto que anhela la aventura más allá de los límites de México, pero no muy al norte. Poco sabe Charlie cuando se hace amigo de una joven humana, Lupe, que juntos, con solo algunas quesadillas de tocino y algunas latas de Jumex, encontrarán más aventuras de las que podrían manejar. En el camino, se encuentrarán con personas extrañas y peligros inesperados en la frontera entre Estados Unidos y México que ponen a prueba su valentía. ¿Podrán Charlie y Lupe regresar sanos y salvos a casa?

Through Fences follows the ups and downs of Latino kids and young adults in the US–Mexico borderlands: San Ysidro, Calexico, McAllen, and back and forth across the border. A young girl’s journey north goes wrong, and now she is in a forbidding new place, away from her parents and brother, where she doesn’t understand what the adults in green are saying even as she tries to obey their rules. Rocky, one of the few white kids in town, stands by and watches as Miguel is jumped by two of his friends. Maggie and her parents are separated at the border in a tragic accident. Alberto’s son doesn’t understand his Mexican father’s hatred for “illegals” or his work as a border patrol agent. Alicia is a TikTok influencer who doesn’t want to grow up to be a hospital cleaning lady like her mother, but COVID complicates things. Whatever their challenges, the kids, teens, tweens, and adults in these pages are just trying to survive their everyday lives. Vibrantly illustrated by Oscar Garza, each of these short stories brings a different perspective on the perils of living on the border while brown.