Garcia Girls Cover

When I examined the cover of How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, a few thoughts popped into my head. I noticed a girl on the cover but only her legs and feet were visible. She was wearing red shoes and a dress with her legs crossed, making me think that she was dancing or somehow involved with dance. I also saw a bird on a tree branch and I was curious to why it was on the cover. The reviews on the back cover and inside the cover were positive saying that the author, Julia Alvarez, has great storytelling skills and adds a "Spanish flavor" to the story. A good description of the story is also given on the back cover. Another comment said that it was "irresistable" and gave it terrific reviews. The family tree illustration was interesting because there are a lot of people in the family and the lines connecting the family together were all over the place. Some names were in bold and I inferred that they are the mains characters in the story. It starts out with "The Conquistadores" at the top of the tree which made me wonder if it will have any significance throughout the book. On the first few pages of the story, Julia Alvarez uses a couple spanish words and a good amoutn of words in italics. Her writing style so far is not very hard to understand and she uses dialougue efectively. Characters such as Yolanda, Carmen, Gabriela, Lucinda, and Tia Flor appear in the first chapter of the book. Yolanda talks and is mentioned a lot so I think she will be important later on. Other characters that were in the family tree have yet to be mentioned in the story. The length of paragraphs are standard and everything is formatted well.