I Am La Chiva: The Colorful Bus of the Andes - Perfect Picture Book Friday #PPBF

A gorgeous debut picture book with a lively, bouncy rhyme which highlights Colombian culture and the beauty of the rural Andes mountains as it explores the events during a day in the life of a Chiva bus.

Book cover - a colorful community bus, packed with people and market goods, rumbling through the Andes.

I Am La Chiva: The Colorful Bus of the Andes

Author: Karol Hernández

Illustrator: Lorena Alvarez Gómez

Publisher: Dial Books/ Penguin Random House (2024)

Ages: 2-5

Fiction

Themes:

Community, heritage, Colombia, and buses.

Synopsis:

For fans of The Little Blue Truck, Red Truck, and The Little Engine That Could, a rhyming ode to a colorful South American bus and the collective spirit of its people.

This joyful and rhyming picture book written by a debut author and illustrated by the beloved creator of Nightlights and Hicotea, follows the iconic bus, or chiva, as it navigates the rugged Andes mountains, celebrating the rich culture and landscape of Colombia that was so beautifully showcased in Disney’s Encanto.

Opening Lines:

On breathtaking mountains, where coffee beans grow,

I carry my friends to the green hills below.

I drive through the Andes, so windy and steep,

Me llamo La Chiva. That's me! Beep, beep, beep!

What I LOVED about this book:

I adore the colors and textures of Lorena Álvarez Gómez's illustrations, especially all the lush flora and fauna of the Andes mountains in Colombia set against the early dawn in this opening spread. And I love Karol Hernández's choice to tell the story from La Chiva's point of view. What a great way to captivate kids (and adults) in this spectacular debut picture book.

Internal spread - La Chiva bu heading out to start its day, heading down a winding mountain road.

Text © Karol Hernández, 2024. Image © Lorena Álvarez Gómez, 2024.

Framed within a day, La Chiva rises "bright and early, before Señor Sun," picking up farmers and their products, Doña Ines, her hen, and "warm arepas and huevos también," school children, and Don Ernesto and his pig Chanchito, as well as many others. As La Chiva travels along the winding, bumpy roads, her passengers enjoy passing the time singing. Lorena Álvarez Gómez's vibrant digital illustrations gorgeously capture La Chiva's colorful designs (which combined with the grillwork give the little bus a wonderful face), the textile patterns, and the musical instruments (accordion, maracas, tiple, and flute) of the Andes. Kids will enjoy tracking the cardinal through the spreads, and spotting the native animals like the sloth, coati, possum, wildcat, and frog. They add such a wonderful extra touch to the book.

Internal spread - La Chiva bus full of people, animals, produce, and plants. With some people playing musical instruments and everyone singing.

Text © Karol Hernández, 2024. Image © Lorena Álvarez Gómez, 2024.

Karol Hernández's rhyming quatrains have a lively, bouncy rhythm which flows along with La Chiva and flawlessly weaves in Spanish (defined in a glossary at the end) and some wonderfully unexpected rhymes.

Internal spread - La Chiva bus on the way to market, when a rock pops a tire on the bus.

As we gaze at the beauty of distant snow peaks,

I hear a loud pop and my steering wheel squeaks.

A bag hits the ground spreading ripe avocados.

Oh no! We’ve got trouble. Estamos varados.

Despite a sudden flat tire, with a bit of collaboration everything and everyone are soon righted and reloaded and the journey to the market continues. The colors, foods, and activity of the market are beautifully explored in the illustrations and text. The ending is a wonderful deep-purple twilight reverse of the opening spread, with a repetition of the last two lines of the opening. Combined with the extra little bit of story in the end pages' illustrations, it is a sweet, touching circular story of a day in the life of La Chiva.

Resources:

Photo of a Chiva bus in Columbia, from the video on making these buses.

watch this video and learn about the creation of La Chiva buses.

Photo of craft stick and foam bus craft.

using craft sticks and foam make and paint your own La Chiva bus.
when was the first time you rode a bus (or an interesting bus you've ridden)? Draw a picture or write a story about the trip in the bus's voice.

If you missed my interview with Karol Hernández on Monday, find it (here).

This post is part of a series by authors and KidLit bloggers called Perfect Picture Book Fridays. For more picture book suggestions and resources see Susanna Leonard Hill's Perfect Picture Books.