To celebrate National Reading Month, award-winning cartoonist and illustrator Lalo Alcaraz read his book, Poquita’s Garden, to second graders at Para Los Nino Elementary School on Skid Row on Wednesday, March 26. It was a thrill for children who live and attend school in Skid Row.
Christina Mariscal Pasten, director of external affairs at the nonprofit Para Los Nino organization, said, “We were founded because there were children on and around Skid Row and we were seeing the number of homeless families increase. While the city and the county have invested a lot of resources into homelessness, it’s really structured for single adult individuals, not for families.”
Para Los Nino helps families in the area, and connects them to housing resources. “One example,” she said, “Union Rescue Mission is the only family shelter on Skid Row. We are their partner school at our middle schools, so at any given time at our middle school, between 20 and 40% of those students are unhoused — whether that’s shelter, other temporary housing, in their cars, in tents, or multiple families living in one home or one apartment.”
Lalo Alcaraz told the young students about his book featuring Amaya, a girl in Los Angeles who turns a neglected city lot into a thriving garden. Amaya and her garden bring neighbors together. The book’s aim is to show children where food comes from, while they learn that it’s important to have healthy fresh food.
Best known for his nationally syndicated comic, “La Cucaracha,” Alcaraz was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2019 and 2020.
Poquita’s Garden was published by the non-profit Heluna Health who partnered with Alcaraz in 2023 to raise public awareness and take action to help those in need of quality healthcare and support during pregnancy and childbirth. The partnership produced an animated short about the benefits of doula care in the Latino community.
Today, the 10,000 print run of Poquita’s Garden adds to efforts by Heluna Health to see that children have “a home library filled with age-appropriate, high-quality books,” according to Heluna Health.