Funny Bones Posada and His Day of the Dead Calaveras book review

Bibliography

Tonatiuh, D. 2015. Funny Bones: Posada and his Day of the Dead Calaveras. New York: NY: Abrams Books for Young Readers. ISBN 9781419716478

Plot Summary

This story is telling the life of Jos Guadalupe Posada (who everyone called Lupe) the creator of the skeleton figures, calaveras, that we see in el Dia de Muertos (the Day of the Dead). The story begins when he was a young boy, and jumps to discussing his famous political illustration in the newspaper article, followed by moving to Mexico City and working with a publisher (Antonio Venegas) by creating illustrations to his tales. The story then continues to discuss how Posada made illustrations for rhyming poems that were done for el Dia de Muertos. Furthermore, the story continues to describe significant times in his life that impacted his calavera drawings while making the reader think twice about the meaning of his drawings by asking socratic questions meant to be already understood by the audience.

Critical Analysis
While capturing the distinct importance of Jose Guadalupe Posada’s craft, this story serves as a biography of his entire life. This is done successfully, as the story not only explains his path in becoming a world-renowned artist known for his cavalera illustrations but by also highlighting other events that he faced throughout his life. This includes explaining his family life, his friendships, his different homes, and even his opinions against the society he lived in, which he expressed with drawing humorous images of the politicians that he did not agree with. However, while the story does incorporate these other parts of his life, the book continues to reinforce the importance of his talent and craft with calavera drawings by not only including different examples of his works but by also incorporating the processes of the printing press that Jose had to do in order to print and sell his works. This helps the biography by showing the significance of this important part of his life but not solely focusing on it.

Review Excerpt(s)

• 2016 Robert F. Sibert Medal winner
• 2016 Pura Belpre Honor book
• Starred review in Publisher’s Weekly: “With a wealth of biographical and contextual information…, its a valuable introduction to Posada that will leave readers thinking about the process of creating art and the social impact it can have” (July 20, 2015).
• Starred review in Kirkus Reviews: “Tonatiuh skillfully blends his own distinctive style of digital collage and hand drawings not only to highlight events in Posada’s life, but also to add whimsical elements by introducing contemporary calaveras” (June 6, 2015).

Connections

• The book can be used in a Social Studies lesson to learn more about el Dia de los Muertos and can be read around that time to learn about how the skull decorations came about and then create one of their own.
• This book can as well be used in a Reading lesson. Students can make their own inferences of the skeleton illustrations and can then compare it to the inference made by the author.