When I was a kid growing up in Texas, I was terrified of going into deep water. That wasn’t just because the movie Jaws had freaked me out. (Although, yes, that giant robotic shark had scared the Twizzlers out of me.)
Worse: I had grown up listening to campfire stories about La Llorona, the weeping ghost who had drowned her own children in a river and was condemned to wander the riverbanks for eternity, looking for their bodies. If she happened to come across a living child at the river, well…she might claim you as her own and pull you under.
Whenever my family camped near the river, I would hear strange wailing sounds at night. I’d huddle deeper inside my sleeping bag. The next morning, I sometimes found heavy tracks in the mud, as if made by dragging, shuffling zombie feet. I was sure La Llorona had been on the prowl, looking for someone like me to drag into the cold, murky depths. Yeah, I had a fun childhood. Thanks for asking.
That’s one reason I’m so excited to share Tehlor Kay Mejia’s Paola Santiago and the River of Tears with you. She gives us a brand-new take on the ancient folktale of La Llorona, and I want you to read it so you can be as terrified as I was!
To be fair, our hero, Paola Santiago, is a lot braver than I was at her age. She’s got a scientific mind, and she doesn’t believe in old folk legends like La Llorona…despite the fact that she has suffered from horrible nightmares about the nearby Gila River her whole life, and even though her mom is always warning her about evil spirits and lighting velita candles to keep her safe. Ghosts aren’t real. Are they? Her mom is just spouting silly superstitions. Right?
Then, when something terrible happens at the river—something that could shatter Pao’s entire life and the lives of her two best friends—Paola starts to wonder if science will be enough to figure out the mystery.
This story is chock-full of suspense and fantastical elements, but it’s more than just a page-turner. I love Paola Santiago because the characters are so relatable. Have you ever struggled with loving your parents while also being mortally embarrassed by them? Have you ever been jealous of a best friend? Have you ever secretly crushed on a friend? Paola’s got all these problems and more. She’s smart and courageous, but she’s also a bubbling stew pot of conflicting emotions about herself, her friends, and her family. Does she have what it takes to handle all that and confront the truth about the strange disappearances that have been happening around town? You’re about to find out!
I’m really envious of you, reading this book for the first time. You’re going to make some lifelong friends in Paola, Emma, Dante, and the rest of the marvelous characters. So put another log on the campfire, guys. Roast some s’mores. Get ready to laugh and enjoy and maybe even shiver in fear at the story you’re about to hear. But whatever you do…don’t go near the water.
It was 118 degrees in Silver Springs, Arizona, and the Gila River was thick with algae. But Paola was careful to keep that observation to herself. The last time she’d mentioned algae in front of her best friend Dante, he’d shoved a gummy worm up her nose.
Algae was green and slimy. It stuck to your feet when you stepped into the wrong part of the swimming hole. It smelled awful. It made the river look weird and alien when the water got too low. But when processed and extracted and purified, an acre of it could create ten thousand gallons of usable biofuel.
And wasn’t that awesome enough to make up for its general ickiness?
Aware of Dante and her other best friend, Emma, sitting on the picnic blanket on either side of her, Pao didn’t speak aloud the wonders of algae. Sometimes she thought there were still granules of sour sugar from that gummy worm slowly making their way to her brain through her nasal cavity. There was a lot of candy spread out before them today, and Pao didn’t want to find out what other varieties would feel like in her nostrils.
Shuddering, she kept her daydreams private for now.
In Silver Springs, the place where Pao was unfortunate enough to have lived since she was four years old, there wasn’t much to do but daydream. In fact, she had become somewhat of a pro.
Sometimes she pondered algae or other fuel experiments, sometimes which kind of robot could best handle the unpredictable topography of Mars, sometimes the latest rocket launch and where it was headed. But Pao’s spacey-ness didn’t discriminate. She’d also been caught drifting off about her favorite graphic novel series, double-chocolate sundaes, and how unfair it was that her mom wouldn’t let her get a dog. (Spoiler alert: It was really, really unfair.)
The thought of dogs had her pondering the specifics of certain breeds again, and she was barely aware of Dante and Emma’s banter beside her until it was too late.
“Earth to Pao!” said Dante on her left, his hand inching dangerously close to a bag of Milk Duds, like he could tell she was silently breaking their no-algae agreement.
“You might have better luck with ‘Mars to Pao.’” Emma giggled on her right.
Pao let today’s gloopy green daydreams float away into the sherbet-colored sky and sat up to face her two friends, smiling in an I know I’m weird but you love me anyway, right? kind of way.
“What did I miss?” she asked.
“Best superhero weapons,” Emma said. “We were debating Captain America’s shield versus Thor’s hammer.”
“Ah, sorry,” Pao said. “But either way, you know I don’t like weapons that defy physics. It’s cheating.”
Emma smiled and shook her head, her freckles standing out against her pink cheeks, her hair sandy and glossy, hanging in two curtains on either side of her face. Beside her, Dante rolled his eyes and huffed, his black hair flopping into his eyes. He tossed it off his face with a flick of his head, a move he’d learned from the older boys on his soccer team, and Pao was feeling so magnanimous she didn’t even tease him for doing it.
“Not everything has to be scientifically accurate, Pao,” he said, making her regret her mercy. “It’s summer—can we just forget about school stuff for, like, three seconds?”
“We can’t afford to. The polar ice caps are melting, Dante,” Pao said witheringly. “Coral reefs are dying by the acre. The ozone—”
“Okay, okay, I get it,” he said. “All science, no fun.”
He saluted, and Pao, feeling bad for being a stick-in-the-mud, tossed a Cheeto at him and stuck out her tongue.
It feels like it’s always been the three of us, Pao thought as Dante ate the Cheeto and then Emma began trying to toss Skittles into his mouth. But it had been Dante and Pao first, long before Emma moved into town two years ago.
Dante had been Pao’s neighbor since they were four, when her dad (whom Pao barely remembered) had left for good and her mom had been forced to move them into a run-down apartment complex at the edge of the desert.
Aside from sporadic birthday cards from her father (never with money inside, and only sometimes on her actual birthday), it had been just Pao and her mom for the past eight years.
In the beginning, her mom had tried to put up a brave front, but on several occasions, Pao had spied her crying out on the patio. One time Dante’s abuela heard the sobbing, and she immediately insisted on having Pao and her mom over for dinner that night. And then the next night. And the next. Every evening for weeks Señora Mata had made rib-sticking feasts while Dante and Pao eyed each other warily across the shag-carpeted living room.