WHITE FLOWER

Scholar Montejo recounts the tale of a prince so devastated by the loss of his family and people that he forgets his name. He looks for work and encounters the lord king, who sets him impossible tasks. The king’s daughter, White Flower, uses her own power to help the prince manage their completion and to circumvent her father and escape his control. But when her mother comes searching for the couple, they are compelled to return. White Flower declares her love, announces that her parents must accept the prince, and the tale ends in their marriage. In his watercolor-and-graphite pictures, Yockteng makes excellent use of traditional Maya imagery: the jaguar, maize, the feathered serpent, the quetzal feather. The stilted and heightened language is best for older readers, and the telling suffers a bit from the kind of broken or rough-edged metaphor that so often comes of tales spun from varied traditions. Especially attractive for Latino and First Nations collections. (source note) (Folktale. 8-12)