{"id":185017,"date":"2026-03-01T00:18:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T00:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/185017\/"},"modified":"2026-03-01T00:18:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T00:18:12","slug":"childrens-book-reaching-for-the-star-takes-you-on-an-el-paso-adventure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/185017\/","title":{"rendered":"Children\u2019s book \u2018Reaching for the Star\u2019 takes you on an El Paso adventure"},"content":{"rendered":"

EL PASO, Texas (KTSM<\/a>) \u2014 El Paso educator and author Jaime Sanchez Gallegos set out to write a children\u2019s book that is very much about El Paso and who we are as El Pasoans.<\/p>\n

His new book, \u201cReaching for the Star,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

The book is also written in both English and Spanish.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is about two kids from El Paso, two typical kids \u2014 11 or 12 years old \u2014 that like anybody else in El Paso, in the evening, you can see that big old Star on the Mountain, and their curiosity piques,\u201d said Sanchez Gallegos, who has been an educator for about 20 years and currently works for a local school district as an administrator.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne day, they decide, \u2018Hmmm, I wonder if we go explore and go touch the Star, let\u2019s reach that Star on the Mountain,\u201d Sanchez Gallegos said.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

They end up using their bilingual skills to get out of trouble along the way.<\/p>\n

Sanchez Gallegos grew up in South-Central El Paso and is a proud graduate of Bowie High School.<\/p>\n

He said that most El Paso kids aren\u2019t just bilingual.<\/p>\n

Most speak three languages, he said \u2014 formal English, formal Spanish and a combination where it gets mixed up called Spanglish, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you grow up, it is literally a part of you, being bilingual and bicultural,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything I became, I took a little bit from this uncle, a little bit of that grandfather\u2019s advice and so on and so forth,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is highlighting the family unit and how kids grow up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sanchez Gallegos said one of his grandfathers had a bakery in Juarez.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe showed me how to wash my hands,\u201d he said. \u201cThat 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. \u2018Oh, I remember, when I was a kid in the bakery.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Sanchez Gallegos said he challenges kids to go talk to their grandmother and ask where she grew up and how she grew up.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt starts a conversation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

As for the book, \u201cReaching for the Star,\u201d his teenage daughter, Mariel Italia Sanchez, served as the editor and designed the front cover.<\/p>\n

Her best friend Sophia Cervantes illustrated the rest of the book. Both are students at El Paso High.<\/p>\n

Gallegos Sanchez said his daughter is really a strong editor and loves literature.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe is a great student. She tweaked it and edited it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

His daughter said that with everything that is going on with artificial intelligence, if you use AI on the book, \u201cdon\u2019t ever talk to me about this again,\u201d he said with a laugh.<\/p>\n

So his daughter Mariel and her best friend ended up teaming up with him, to bring the book to life.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was quite the project with my daughter and her best friend, collaborating and going back and forth, sharing ideas and creating this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The book is currently available on Amazon in both paperback and hardcover formats. Here<\/a> is a link.<\/p>\n

Sanchez Gallegos also said the book will soon be available at El Paso locations of Barnes and Noble in early March.<\/p>\n

It is also available at a variety of other online retailers.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KTSM 9 News. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) \u2014 El Paso educator and author Jaime Sanchez Gallegos set out to write a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185018,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,140,139,73947,73945,73946,5881],"class_list":["post-185017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news","tag-gallegos-sanchez","tag-jaime-sanchez-gallegos","tag-sanchez-gallegos","tag-star"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}