A young Aztec girl tells her little brother how their parents create beautiful painted manuscripts, or codices. She explains to him how paper is made from local plants and how the long paper is folded into a book. Her parents and others paint the codices to tell the story of their people’s way of life, documenting their history, science, tributes, and sacred rituals. Duncan Tonatiuh’s lyrical prose and beloved illustration style, inspired by the pre-Columbian codices, tell the story of how — contrary to the historical narrative that European colonizers bestowed “civilization” and knowledge to the Americas — the Aztec and their neighbors in the Valley of Mexico painted books and records long before Columbus arrived, and continued doing so among their Nahua-speaking descendants for generations after the Spanish Conquest.
Other books by this author
Danza!: Amalia Hernández and Mexico’s Folkloric Ballet
Age Level:
6-9 Genre:
Biography, Nonfiction 
Dear Primo
Age Level:
6-9 
Diego Rivera: His World and Ours
Age Level:
6-9 
Feathered Serpent and the Five Suns: A Mesoamerican Creation Myth
Age Level:
6-9 Genre:
Fiction, Myths and Legends Published:
2020
Separate Is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and Her Family’s Fight for Desegregation
Age Level:
6-9 Genre:
Biography, Nonfiction 
The Princess and the Warrior: A Tale of Two Volcanoes
Age Level:
6-9 Genre:
Fiction, Myths and Legends Published:
2016
Country:
Mexico