Maria Paints the Hills

Illustrated with wonderfully ingenuous paintings of scenes of Santa Fe in the early part of the twentieth century, this picture book's story of a girl becoming an artist is based on childhood memories. Maria draws the world around her—chile vendors, the feast of San Isidro, preparing for the fiesta, flying kites, and picking herbs—to entertain herself and her mother. When her mother gives her a set of paints, it is the dawning of Maria's creative self as she paints the hills around her beloved town.