Mexico is right next door for a lot of us, and yet its stories can feel like a whole world of their own: hand-carved animals from a workshop in Oaxaca, or a girl who offers a handful of weeds to the Baby Jesus and watches them bloom into poinsettias. Whether your family has roots in Mexico, a bit of Spanish at home, or a kid who wants to know what those bright paper skeletons are all about, there is a book here that will pull them in.
We’ve gathered our favorite books set in Mexico and sorted them by age so you can find the right one quickly. There are sturdy bilingual board books, picture books about real Mexican artists and dancers, and chapter books rooted in Aztec legend and village magic. Quite a few of these carry both English and Spanish on the page, which makes them a gift for bilingual homes and anyone learning. Pick a few and you have the beginning of a lovely shelf.
First Words in Two Languages
The youngest explorers can meet Mexico through its folk art, with a bit of Spanish along the way.
ABeCedarios: Mexican Folk Art ABCs in English and Spanish (First Concepts in Mexican Folk Art)
Colores de la Vida: Mexican Folk Art Colors in English and Spanish (First Concepts in Mexican Folk Art)
Cynthia Weill builds these concept books around real hand-carved animals made by artisans in Oaxaca, and the photographs practically glow. Abecedarios walks through the alphabet in English and Spanish with a painted wooden creature for each letter, while Colores de la Vida does the same for colors. They are simple enough for a one year old to point at and rich enough that you will want to keep them out on the shelf as art. A wonderful, gentle first taste of both the language and Mexican folk tradition.
Everyday Life in Mexico
These two bilingual picture books slow down and show a child’s ordinary day.
I See the Sun in Mexico follows Luis, a boy from a working-class family in La Paz whose father cooks on an excursion boat and whose mother makes the best tortillas in the city. Today Luis gets to spend the whole day out on the water, and the story stays close to the small pleasures of it. With English and Spanish side by side, it is a warm, real look at a life that may be different from or a lot like your reader’s own.
Colors come alive through rhythm and rhyme in Spicy Hot Colors, a bilingual romp inspired by the cultures of Latin America. Paula Barragán’s bold cut-paper illustrations give each color its own beat, and the whole book begs to be read out loud with some bounce in your voice. Great for a preschooler who likes a book you can practically dance to.
Holidays and Celebrations
Two of Mexico’s best-loved traditions, one for Christmas and one for the Day of the Dead.
Tomie dePaola retells a beloved Mexican Christmas legend in The Legend of the Poinsettia. Lucida cannot finish her gift for the Baby Jesus in time for the Christmas procession, and a small miracle turns a handful of humble weeds into the brilliant red flower we now call the poinsettia. It is tender and a little wondrous, and it gives that supermarket holiday plant a story your kids will remember every December.
Ever wonder where those dancing skeletons on the Day of the Dead come from? Funny Bones introduces the Mexican artist José Guadalupe Posada, whose playful drawings of calaveras, skeletons doing everyday things, became forever linked with the holiday. Duncan Tonatiuh tells it with his distinctive Mixtec-inspired art, and the book earned the Sibert Medal for the way it makes a real artist’s life genuinely fun. A great pick for a curious kid who has seen the images but never heard the story.
Mexican Artists and Makers
Some of the best books about Mexico are true, and they introduce kids to real people who made something beautiful.
Here is Frida Kahlo told through the animals she loved: her monkeys, her parrot, her little deer, and the rest of the menagerie that filled her home and her paintings. Frida Kahlo y sus Animalitos is the Spanish edition, and it earned a Pura Belpré Illustrator Honor for John Parra’s warm, folk-art illustrations. Building the story around her pets makes one of the world’s most famous artists feel close and knowable to a young child. A lovely choice for a bilingual home or a budding artist.
The Pot That Juan Built tells the true story of Juan Quezada, a potter from the village of Mata Ortiz in northern Mexico who taught himself to revive the ancient pottery methods of the Casas Grandes people, using only natural materials he gathered himself. Nancy Andrews-Goebel structures it with a cumulative rhyme on one page and the real history on the other, so it works for a range of ages at once. It is a quietly inspiring story about patience and bringing a lost art back to life.
Danza! is the story of Amalia Hernández, the dancer who founded El Ballet Folklórico de México and brought the folk dances of her country to stages all over the world. Duncan Tonatiuh’s art moves like the dances themselves, full of swirling skirts and motion. For a kid who loves to dance, or who is discovering that a passion can become a whole life’s work, this one sings.
You have probably heard music like his without knowing his name. Esquivel! is a lively picture-book biography of Juan García Esquivel, the Mexican musician who invented the swooping, playful sound of space-age lounge music. Susan Wood tells it with real bounce, and Duncan Tonatiuh’s illustrations give it a retro shimmer. A fun, offbeat pick that shows kids Mexican creativity in a corner they would never expect.
Chapter Books for Older Readers
When a reader is ready for a longer adventure, these root fantasy and self-discovery in Mexico.
The Smoking Mirror opens when the mother of twelve-year-old twins Carol and Johnny Garza vanishes, and the two learn a startling truth about themselves: they are naguales, shape-shifters out of Mesoamerican legend. David Bowles sends them into a mythic underworld drawn straight from Aztec and Maya stories, and it is a fast, fierce adventure that wears its heritage proudly. A strong pick for a middle-grade reader who loves myth with real teeth.
Clara Luna’s name means “clear moon” in Spanish, but her head has felt anything but clear lately. In What the Moon Saw, a letter arrives from grandparents she has never met, inviting her to their village in Mexico, and the summer she spends there opens up a family history and a kind of magic she never expected. Laura Resau writes the place so vividly you can smell the woodsmoke. A tender, immersive read for an older kid ready to travel a while.
Keep Traveling
Give a child a shelf of Mexico and they get a potter who taught himself an ancient craft and a pair of twins who turn out to be shape-shifters out of Aztec legend. Start with a folk-art alphabet and a holiday legend, and let your reader wander from there.