Bowels, D. (2015). The smoking mirror. Australia: IFWG Publishing.
Carol and Johnny Garza are 12-year-old twins whose lives in a small Texas town are forever changed by their mother's unexplained disappearance. Shipped off to relatives in Mexico by their grieving father, the twins soon learn that their mother is anagual, a shapeshifter, and that they have inherited her powers. In order to rescue her, they will have to descend into the Aztec underworld and face the dangers that await them.
David Bowles was born to residents of the Rio Grande Valley of Texas in 1970. Raised in an ethnically diverse family with Latino roots, he was hooked on dark folktales at an early age by his grandmother Marie Garza, the family storyteller. David Bowles resides in the Río Grande Valley of south Texas with his wife and children. His collection of Mesoamerican verse FLOWER, SONG, DANCE: AZTEC AND MAYAN POETRY won the 2014 Soeurette Diehl Fraser Award for Best Translation. Bowles is author of several other books, including BORDER LORE, SHATTERING AND BRICOLAGE, MEXICAN BESTIARY, and THE SEED.
2016 Pura Belpré Honor Book Award
4th-7th grade
Fantasy
