Mari and the Curse of El Cocodrilo
by Adrianna Cuevas
Intermediate, Middle School    Harper/HarperCollins    256 pp.
10/23    9780063285491    $18.99
e-book ed.  9780063285514    $10.99

Twelve-year-old Mari loves her family but tries to avoid “Peak Cubanity,” the times she feels their Cuban heritage sticks out in her small Texan town. When everyone else burns effigies in the backyard on New Year’s Eve to ward off bad luck, Mari refuses to burn hers, worried that a neighbor girl, who bullies her for her ethnicity, is watching. This curses Mari: a crocodile-shaped mark appears on her arm, bugs follow her in school, and her violin attacks her during mariachi practice. Worse, the curse spreads to a friend. Luckily, Mari has a newfound power to summon the ghosts of her ancestors, some of whom died trying to flee Cuba alongside her abuelitos. They explain that she has the curse of El Cocodrilo, who feeds on misery. The plan she concocts to vanquish “this Cocodrilo guy” relies on the embrace of her Peak Cubanity. Although the text deals with heavy themes, Cuevas keeps a light tone and inserts moments of humor (a young ancestor’s superpower is super-snot). Readers will relate to Mari’s self-consciousness and fear of change in her friend group, and an explanation of microaggressions from one of Mari’s peers is easy to digest. Spanish is interspersed, translated contextually for readers, and an author’s note gives more details on Cuevas’s bilingual family and Latine New Year’s traditions.

From the January/February 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.