Family Pictures / Cuadros de familia

Written and illustrated by Carmen Lomas Garza

Ebook

View the Teacher's Guide

Family Pictures is the story of Carmen Lomas Garza's girlhood in Kingsville, Texas: celebrating birthdays, making tamales, picking cactus, and confiding to her sister her dreams of becoming an artist. These day-to-day experiences are told through fifteen paintings and stories, each focusing on a different aspect of Carmen’s traditional Mexican American culture growing up.

The paintings and stories reflect the author's strong sense of family and community and demonstrate how her mother's love and hard work helped Carmen achieve her dream. For the hundreds of thousands of Mexican Americans, Carmen Lomas Garza offers a book that reflects their lives and cultural traditions. For others, this beautiful work will offer insights into a fascinating life and a rich community.

Sandra Cisneros provided the introduction and Pat Mora the afterword for this touchstone of Latino children’s literature.

This book is bilingual (English and Spanish).

Check out the classroom-tested, standards-aligned lesson plans My Family Traditions: A Class Book and a Potluck Lunch by Loraine Woodard and Storytelling in the Social Studies Classroom by Jacqueline Hansen for Family Pictures, provided by ReadWriteThink.org, a website developed by the International Reading Association and the National Council of Teachers of English.

Pair Family Pictures with the ¡Piñatas! unit by Kristina Riley and also with the author study guide Carmen Lomas Garza: Chicana Author and Illustrator by Deborah J. Francis, part of The Alma Project, a cultural infusion model by Denver Public Schools.

Discover more reading and craft tips created by the staff and partners of Reading to Kids, a grassroots organization dedicated to inspiring underserved children with a love of reading.

Examine the work of American painter Carmen Lomas Garza with “Latino Family Stories,” a set of four lesson plans divided into grade bands featuring Family Pictures/Cuadros de familia, from the Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies.