Summer of the Mariposas is not just a magical Mexican American retelling of The Odyssey, it is a celebration of sisterhood and maternal love. Can these fantastic trials prepare Odilia and her sisters for what happens when they face their final test, returning home to the real world, where goddesses and ghosts can no longer help them? Along the way, they must outsmart a witch and her Evil Trinity: a wily warlock, a coven of vicious half-human barn owls, and a bloodthirsty livestock-hunting chupacabras. With the supernatural aid of ghostly La Llorona via a magical earring, Odilia and her little sisters travel a road of tribulation to their long-lost grandmother's house. But returning home to Texas turns into an odyssey that would rival Homer's original tale.

When Odilia and her four sisters find a dead body in the swimming hole, they embark on a hero's journey to return the dead man to his family in Mexico. In this young adult retelling of The Odyssey, Odilia and her four sisters journey to Mexico to return a dead man to his family and encounter magical creatures along the way. RL.8.4, L.8.5 Work Time C: Students will analyze figurative language in a sentence from page 84 of Summer of the Mariposas. Best Children's Books of the Year, Bank Street College of Educationīest Books of the Year, School Library JournalĪmelia Bloomer Project - Feminist Task Force, American Library Association (ALA)Īndre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy Finalist, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Triads are allocated a kind of figurative language with an example from Summer of the Mariposas, and they identify a definition for this figurative language and infer what the example means in the novel.

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