In 1931 Ybor City, FL, 13-year-old Bella wants to be a respected lector like her grandfather. He is a lector at the cigar factory, reading aloud to the workers from the newspapers, literary classics and union news. Bella knows she must be educated to be a lector and she hopes to attend high school with her best friend Mary. But with her father dead and her mother supporting the family with laundry jobs, Bella ends up working in the cigar factory stripping room. Change is afoot; the union and the workers are agitating for better pay and working conditions. Bella’s Tia Lola tries to get her involved. At the same time, the radio is making inroads in the community and factories, threatening grandfather’s livelihood. Bella comes to make her peace with the changes: the union is working for the good of the workers and she gets grandfather a job at the radio station presenting its Spanish story hour. ( )

I liked El Lector better than the 3 star rating might suggest, mainly because it takes on labor issues and that is apparently a tough topic to write about for children without sounding too strident. Or too ambivalent. This book veered a bit toward the didactic before reining in. The character of Tia Lola was wonderful. There is such a tendency to characterize female workers during the Depression as downtrodden drudges in sunbonnets, but in fact, many of the younger ones were thoroughly modern with bobbed hair, lipstick, and a pretty darn insouciant attitude toward the opposite sex. Lola let the reader see what that might look like. It was refreshing to read a book set in Florida during the Great Depression, and Durbin did a wonderful job of explaining the culture of the tobacco workers and the practice of el lector. Like the main character, Bella, I want to be el lector!! ( )