Viento, Vientito // Wind, Little Wind — Jorge Argueta

“My name is Wind / but everyone knows me / as Little Wind.” In this beautiful, poetic ode to the refreshing but sometimes dangerous force of wind, award-winning children's book author Jorge Argueta describes -- in English, Spanish and Nahuat -- the power of air from the perspective of a mischievous youngster.

He is born everywhere and can fly all around Mother Earth. Little Wind is swift like a hummingbird, he comes and goes. Zummm, zummm, zummm. “You can't see me. / You can't touch me. / But you can feel me.” Some call him the north wind, or draft, breeze, gale, hurricane, tornado, but “I like it better / When they call me Wind, Little Wind.”

A Junior Library Guild selection, this book about the wind reflects Argueta's indigenous roots and his appreciation for the natural world. Felipe Ugalde Alcántara's gorgeous illustrations depict birds floating on the breeze and trees bent under strong gusts. Containing the English and Spanish text on each page, the entire poem appears at the end in Nahuat, the language of Argueta's Pipil-Nahua ancestors. The third book in a four-part series about Mother Earth, this is an excellent choice to encourage children to write their own poems about nature and to begin conversations about the interconnected web of life.