From Pura Belpré Honor-winning author Adrianna Cuevas comes Mari
and the Curse of El Cocodrilo, a new middle grade novel about a young
Cuban American girl who must fight to break a curse of bad luck set upon
her by El Cocodrilo when she rejects her family's traditions.
If Mari Feijoo could, she would turn her family's Peak Cubanity down a
notch, just enough so that her snooping neighbor and classmate Mykenzye
wouldn't have anything to tease her about. That's why this year, there's
no way that Mari's joining in on one of the big-gest Feijoo family
traditions--burning the New Year's Eve effigy her abuela makes.
Only Mari never suspects that failing to toss her effigy in the fire
would bring something much worse than sneering words at school: a curse
of bad luck from El Cocodrilo. At first, it's just possessed violins and
grade sabotaging pencils, but once El Cocodrilo learns that he becomes
more powerful with each new misery, her luck goes from bad to
nightmarish as the curse spreads to her friend Keisha.
Instead of focusing on Mari's mariachi band tryout and Keisha's fencing
tournament, the pair, along with their friend Juan Carlos, are racing
against the clock to break the curse. But when Mari discovers her
family's gift to call upon their ancestors, she and her friends will
have to find a way to work with the unexpected help that arrives from
the far corners of Mari's family tree. Only will it be enough to defeat
El Cocodrilo before he makes their last year of elementary school the
worst ever and tears their friendship apart?
