Title: Walking stars
Author: Villaseñor, Victor
Age range: 13 and older
Booktalk author: Susan Harloe
Life is full of magic, real magic... that gives power and strength to endure and triumph in la vida. There is Shep, 16 year old Joseph's dog who goes crazy-loco one night, racing around and around the house, howling and barking without stopping. Shep, half coyote and half shepherd, is a smart dog- he's never acted like this before. It's as if Shep's heart is breaking -- but then people realize that Shep is going crazy because Joseph is in the hospital, dying of complications from a football injury. Finally, Rosa, the Mexican-Indian woman who cares for Joseph's family, says that Shep has run off to intercept Joseph's soul.
This is the first hint of magic that Victor Villaseñor remembers. As an eight-year-old boy, he just knew how sorrowful he felt at his brother's death. Now, he tells this story to show how Joseph's dog Shep awakened him to the world of magic and dreams.
Then there s the story that Victor's father tells him about the great serpent of Los Alstos de Jalisco, who attacked men on horseback, knocking them to the ground, and how Victor's own grandfather had ripped a branch from a dead tree, jammed it into the serpent's mouth, roped the monster and dragged him into town where the head of the serpent was sliced off. Victor thinks this is a great story, a wonderful tall tale, but doesn't for a minute that it is true. Even when his father swears he saw the monster with his own eyes, Victor is in disbelief. And then, one day at the San Diego Zoo, Victor laughingly asks the snake expert if there could ever be a snake that could stand up six or seven feet tall attacking a man on horseback for the purpose of eating him. To his great surprise, the expert replies that in Mexico (where Victor's grandfather had lived) you'll find the bushmaster, a snake so big and fearless they are nearly extinct. "they'll attack a car, a train, anything." and so, in a sudden flash, Victor realizes that the stories his parents had told him -- Indian legends he grew up with -- were true!
He travels to the mountains of Mexico to explore his past, and finds magic everywhere. He learns that when his father, Juan, was a little boy, all the young Indian boys of their high mountain village were being killed by the Mexican soldiers -- to rid Mexico of Indians. Juan and his friend Peron, only ten years old, connive to assassinate el coronel, ridding the mountains of evil. Not much later, Juan races 100 miles through heat and without water -- sustained only by his strong body and the strength of love -- to reach the train taking his family to El Norte. through these stories of strength and magic, Victor comes to believe that al people are walking stars that come from the heavens, and in the great power of words that can tell these stories.