La Cucaracha Martina A Carribean Folktaleretold and illustrated by Daniel Moreton
Turtle Books, 1997
Simply put: While searching for the source of one beautiful sound, Martina, a ravishing cockroach who is tired of the city life, rejects marriage proposals from a menagerie of city animals which woo her with their noises. All ends well when she finally meets the cricket of her dreams and after the wedding they move to the country.
The illustrations are sharp and colorful and were created on a Mac with Adobe Illustrator. The book has a ton of delicious details and a spattering of Spanish: Aeropuerto, Telefono, Autobus... by way of example. The signage in particular is all in Spanish, and the porcine waiter wears a name tag which reads "Me Llamo Puerco."
The sounds the various animals make are all written in large funky fonts and the illustrations feature text all over the place, not exactly in the hyper text sense but in something fresh and unusual from the picture books of the past.
While I'm not a fan of the common cockroach in regular life, I have a soft spot for Miss Martina and I'm glad she found her wonderful noise and the creature that belonged to it!
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