Moví la mano/I Moved My Hand

Luján and Sadat, who previously collaborated on 2006’s Tarde de invierno/Winter Afternoon, return with another bilingual tale built around self-expression. Their heroine, seen wearing a pink tutu in her family’s living room, commands her parents’ full attention as she begins to dance. “I moved my hand and/ I found a coconut,” the girl narrates. “I shook the coconut/ and I found a lake.” Dominated by swaths of inky blackness, Sadat’s mixed-media artwork shows the domestic landscape receding—the girl’s parents disappear into silhouette, a table with a teapot transforms into an animal. The dance then takes the girl underwater, where she finds a large fish and a smiling moon, which she rides through the night sky. She’s so caught up in her storytelling and movement that she even gets a bit lost (“What was I saying...?”), before regaining her footing, pirouetting along a rainbow and embracing her proud, smiling parents. The reappearance of a rainbow-hued unicorn in the empty, darkened living room cements the idea that the girl’s creativity and imagination aren’t merely flights of fancy, but forces with legitimate power. Ages 2–up. [em](Oct.) [/em]