Elisa Amado, illustrated by Ianna Andréadi, Sun Stone by Felipe Dávalos
Sun Stone Days/ Tonalín/ Días de Piedra
Groundwood Books, 2007

Rating: G*

Go way back - back before the days of page-a-day calendars, magnetic refrigerator calendars, and giant erasable wall calendars. Calendars have a long history.

Discovered in 1790 in Mexico, the Sun Stone was used by the Aztecs to measure time. Each of the twenty days of the Aztec month has its own symbol. All twenty symbols have been recreated in Sun Stone Days by illustrator Ianna Andréadis. The right hand pages show the symbol, and the left hand pages have the corresponding symbol name in English, Nahuatl, and Spanish. Although the text is in three different colours- red for English, black for Nahuatl, and green for Spanish, the painted symbols are in black and white. Thick, black sweeps move across the page to form identifiable outlines. The toothy alligator starts the book, with a lizard, a deer, and a rabbit following behind. The wind symbol looks like arched trees, and the movement symbol resembles a swirly coil.

Felipe Dávalos is a world famous archeological artist and his painting of the Sun Stone can be seen near the back of this book. Readers can see the twenty symbols within one of the inner circles on his colourful painting of the Sun Stone.

Sun Stone Days won a New Horizons Prize at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair. Guatemalan author and translator Elisa Amado lives in Toronto . Her other books include Cousins and Tricycle. Illustrator Ianna Andréadis was born in Athens , and studied in Paris. Her other works include the book Cactus and a series of art books. Together, Elisa Amado and Ianna Andréadis bring a little Aztec history to the present. Their book is a nice presentation of a record from the past. A quick read, this book could be used by someone learning Mesoamerican culture, or by someone interested in the evolution of the calendar.

Thematic Links: Aztec Art; Calendars; Time; Customs; Mexico

Tanya Boudreau
Vol. 13, number 1
October 2007

*Rating System:
E - Excellent, enduring, everyone should see it!
G - Good, even great at times, generally useful!
A - Average, all right, has its applications.
P - Problematic, puzzling, poorly presented.