Presented in both English and Spanish, this folktale from New Mexico follows the story of Arcía, the kindhearted daughter of a widowed sheepherder. Convincing her father to marry their neighbor, also widowed, she soon regrets the change in her familiar circumstances, as Margarita begins to mistreat her, and to favor her own biological daughters. When her sheep's wool is stolen by a hawk one day, while she is washing it at the local stream, Arcía's politeness to the avian thief wins her a reward, in the form of a little golden star on her forehead. Although this makes her stepsisters jealous, when those two girls attempt to win a star themselves, they are rude and contemptuous, rather than polite, and find themselves with a donkey ear and a cow horn on their foreheads instead of a star. As for Arcía, her bright star eventually attracts the attention of a nearby prince, who comes looking for her, after he gets a glimpse of her at his party...

This is the second retelling of this folktale that I have read in picture-book form, following upon Robert D. San Souci's Little Gold Star: A Spanish American Cinderella Tale. Unlike that other story, which features the figure of the Virgin Mary, Estrellita de oro / Little Gold Star: A Cinderella Cuento utilizes a hawk to reward the heroine with her lovely gold star. It's interesting to note that the two books were published the same year (2000), and that, according to author Joe Hayes' note, it is more common for this story to include the Virgin Mary, than not. This made me wonder why Hayes chose to use another variant - was he aware of the San Souci project, and wanting to set his version apart? According to his note, he was most influenced by the retelling of the tale found in Aurora Lucero-White's Literary Folklore of the Hispanic Southwest, so perhaps the explanation is simply that this version had a hawk, rather than the Virgin Mary.

Leaving aside issues of source material and variant, I enjoyed the story here, and I appreciated that it was presented in both English and Spanish. This is something that Joe Hayes is known for, and that I also appreciated in his wonderful Pajaro Verde / The Green Bird. I will have to try to track down more of his work! The accompanying artwork is lovely, created in a folk style using a vivid color palette. I found the back story behind the illustrations, discussed in the rear dust-jacket blurb, quite moving. Apparently the first three paintings were done by Gloria Osuna Pérez, who then became ill with ovarian cancer, in the midst of the project. Her daughter and caregiver, Lucía Ángela Pérez, also an artist, then stepped in and completed the work, under her mother's instruction. I'm sure this was a labor of love for both of them, and I found that information quite poignant. This is one I would recommend to young folklore enthusiasts, to readers seeking Cinderella variants from around the world, and to those interested in the Hispanic folklore of the American Southwest. ( )