EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) — El Paso educator and author Jaime Sanchez Gallegos set out to write a children’s book that is very much about El Paso and who we are as El Pasoans.
His new book, “Reaching for the Star,” features an illustrated El Paso sunset and the Star on the Mountain on the front cover. The book also features as its two protagonists, two local kids who display their bilingual language skills when they go on an adventure that is truly unique to the Sun City.
The book is also written in both English and Spanish.
“It is about two kids from El Paso, two typical kids — 11 or 12 years old — that like anybody else in El Paso, in the evening, you can see that big old Star on the Mountain, and their curiosity piques,” said Sanchez Gallegos, who has been an educator for about 20 years and currently works for a local school district as an administrator.
“One day, they decide, ‘Hmmm, I wonder if we go explore and go touch the Star, let’s reach that Star on the Mountain,” Sanchez Gallegos said.
The book takes you on an adventure as these two kids go exploring, up to Scenic Drive, where they use the coin-operated binoculars to look down on the city and then to look at the mountain.
They end up using their bilingual skills to get out of trouble along the way.
Sanchez Gallegos grew up in South-Central El Paso and is a proud graduate of Bowie High School.
He said that most El Paso kids aren’t just bilingual.
Most speak three languages, he said — formal English, formal Spanish and a combination where it gets mixed up called Spanglish, he said.
“When you grow up, it is literally a part of you, being bilingual and bicultural,” he said.
Sanchez Gallegos said he wanted to make the book as real as possible and highlight the real-world skills that kids growing up along the border have been able to gain from their family.
He said he is working on two more books that also focus on skills he learned as a kid growing up in this bicultural area.
“Everything I became, I took a little bit from this uncle, a little bit of that grandfather’s advice and so on and so forth,” he said. “It is highlighting the family unit and how kids grow up.”
Sanchez Gallegos said one of his grandfathers had a bakery in Juarez.
“He showed me how to wash my hands,” he said. “That day, we would mix all the dough with your arms and hands. You have to wash for seven minutes and all the way past the elbows. When Covid hit, everyone was trying to tell me how to wash my hands. ‘Oh, I remember, when I was a kid in the bakery.’”
Sanchez Gallegos said he challenges kids to go talk to their grandmother and ask where she grew up and how she grew up.
“It starts a conversation,” he said.
As for the book, “Reaching for the Star,” his teenage daughter, Mariel Italia Sanchez, served as the editor and designed the front cover.
Her best friend Sophia Cervantes illustrated the rest of the book. Both are students at El Paso High.
Gallegos Sanchez said his daughter is really a strong editor and loves literature.
“She is a great student. She tweaked it and edited it,” he said.
Sanchez Gallegos said he originally wrote what would become this book about 20 years ago. He rediscovered it by going through some old computer files.
His daughter said that with everything that is going on with artificial intelligence, if you use AI on the book, “don’t ever talk to me about this again,” he said with a laugh.
So his daughter Mariel and her best friend ended up teaming up with him, to bring the book to life.
“It was quite the project with my daughter and her best friend, collaborating and going back and forth, sharing ideas and creating this,” he said.
The book is currently available on Amazon in both paperback and hardcover formats. Here is a link.
Sanchez Gallegos also said the book will soon be available at El Paso locations of Barnes and Noble in early March.
It is also available at a variety of other online retailers.
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