Bilingual (English and Spanish) text and illustrations describe the author-artist's experiences growing up in a traditional Hispanic community in south Texas, near the border with Mexico. The brightly colored paintings of her family and community show, in great detail, the everyday activities that remain vivid in her memory: picking oranges for her grandmother, making tamales with the entire family, swimming in the gulf of Mexico, attending a cakewalk to raise money to send a Mexican American to the university. These glimpses into Lomas Garza's childhood show the vitality of her loving extended family and conclude with a tribute to her mother, who encouraged her to become an artist by "laying out the bed for our dreams of the future." The paper cut-out (papel picado) images on the text pages were cut from black paper with exacto knives. Papel picado is a traditional Mexican folk-art technique which Lomas Garza often uses to portray intricate images. (TD)