The Road to Santiago

"Torrecilla illustrates this odyssey with brightly lit scenes of tight-lipped figures in 1950s-style hair and dress, posed against clean, if somewhat rundown, urban and rural backgrounds. . . It's the remembered ringing of the cathedral bells, and the taste of the sweet buñelo in Figueredo's hand, however, that will leave the strongest impression on children"

"Focused sharply on the child's longing to celebrate with his relatives, the story of their journey reflects the circumstances of civil war without partisan rancor or needless violence. Torrecilla's full-color illustrations embody the warmth of the text and expand on it, filling the pages with lush tropical foliage, period dress, aging vehicles, and the soldiers of the embattled president. Coupled with Liz Rosenberg's The Silence in the Mountains, (1999), this can be used to present a relatively non-threatening look at how civil violence, in two very different locales, can affect a child's life. It also adds to the always sparsely filled shelf of first-rate multicultural Christmas tales. . ."