Con Las charlas del abuelo, se ha dado forma a un conjunto de narraciones realizadas con la finalidad de mostrar a padres y educadores una manera de familiarizar al niño con la Historia de la Salvación, de manera que él también se vaya sintiendo incluido en ella. Se ha procurado emplear un lenguaje sencillo, pensando en que convenía que el texto pudiera ser asequible para cualquier chico, a partir de los doce años. El conocimiento de estas "Charlas" puede resultar útil a quienes se vean sorprendidos en cualquier momento ante las complicadas preguntas, sobre cuestiones sexuales o temas relacionados con la fe, con que los pequeños suelen abordar a las personas de quienes dependen. Pensando en todo esto, se han tratado todos los asuntos con fidelidad al aspecto científico de las cuestiones que así lo han requerido, sin dejar de lado la ampliación de la visión que sobre cada tema proporciona la fe, dejando bien sentada la complementariedad de ambos conocimientos. Estos relatos se han confeccionado pensando en la posible aplicación que de ellos pueda hacerse, dirigida, preferentemente, al segmento de niños comprendido entre los que comienzan su preparación para la Primera Comunión y los que acaban de realizar el sacramento de la confirmación. Esos años son verdaderamente cruciales para la asimilación de la fe a la que tienen derecho y que, por lo tanto, les debe ser transmitida. Sin pretender sustituir la labor de padres y educadores, esta obra intenta ser una ayuda eficaz y amena para la coronación de tan loable fin.

The first Latin American to receive a Nobel Prize for Literature, the Chilean writer Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957) is often characterized as a healing, maternal voice who spoke on behalf of women, indigenous peoples, the disenfranchised, children, and the rural poor. She is that political poet and more: a poet of philosophical meditation, self-consciousness, and daring. This is a book full of surprises and paradoxes. The complexity and structural boldness of these prose-poems, especially the female-erotic prose pieces of her first book, make them an important moment in the history of literary modernism in a tradition that runs from Baudelaire, the North American moderns, and the South American postmodernistas. It's a book that will be eye-opening and informative to the general reader as well as to students of gender studies, cultural studies, literary history, and poetry. This Spanish-English bilingual volume gathers the most famous and representative prose writings of Gabriela Mistral, which have not been as readily available to English-only readers as her poetry. The pieces are grouped into four sections. "Fables, Elegies, and Things of the Earth" includes fifteen of Mistral's most accessible prose-poems. "Prose and Prose-Poems from Desolación / Desolation [1922]" presents all the prose from Mistral's first important book. "Lyrical Biographies" are Mistral's poetic meditations on Saint Francis and Sor Juana de la Cruz. "Literary Essays, Journalism, 'Messages'" collects pieces that reveal Mistral's opinions on a wide range of subjects, including the practice of teaching; the writers Alfonso Reyes, Alfonsina Storni, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Pablo Neruda; Mistral's own writing practices; and her social beliefs. Editor/translator Stephen Tapscott rounds out the volume with a chronology of Mistral's life and a brief introduction to her career and prose.

"The story of a middle-aged, middle class middle-manager who does not know how to pull the strings that could get him reinstated to his job in ... Spain's civil service, from which he has been laid off with only two months to go for him to be eligible for his pension, and save his family from certain poverty"--Amazon.com.