Book Review: The Dia de Los Muertos Story

Dia de Los Muertos might seem like a fun holiday full of sugar skulls and colorful cut paper banners, but its origins are more serious as a way to honor and remember the dead.

The Dia de Los Muretos Story by Andrea Jáuregui de la Torre and illustrated by Laura González shares the history and traditions of the day without making it scary. It describes the day as beginning in the Aztec civilization as long as 3,000 years ago.

The Aztecs celebrated their dead about six times a year. They had specific celebrations honoring children who had died as well as adults, and there were banquets and gifts to the gods in honor of those who had passed.

When the Spanish arrived in Mexico and many people converted to Catholicism, the traditions of All Saints and All Souls Day (which honor the dead who have become saints as well as others who have passed on) got mixed with the Aztec tradition and became Dia de Los Muertos.

Preparations for the holiday include cleaning the house and making an altar for the ofrendas or offerings for the dead. The cut paper decorations, known as papel picado, also come from an Aztec tradition of cutting paper (their paper was made from tree bark). These decorations represent air, and other things on and around the altar represent other elements such as a cup of water, candles for fire and food for earth.

Special foods include not only sugar skulls but also conchas (a sweet bread), pan de muertos (bread decorated with a cross), tamales and mole, among others. The book talks about other symbols used for Dia de Los Muertos including marigolds and skeletons, and explores why you might see a party in a cemetery on the holiday.

The book is full of lovely illustrations and includes a timeline of how Dia de Los Muertos has evolved and been recognized around the world.

This would be a nice book to read if you have Mexican children in your classroom or if the day is celebrated in your community to help other kids understand what it’s about. And even if those things aren’t true it’s fun for kids of all backgrounds to learn about other cultures and their meaningful holidays.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover paper over boards. Published 2025 by becker & mayer kids. Suggested retail price $18.99. Available in Spanish and English.

Any time of year is a good time for stash busting, but if you can combine it with knitting a blanket that will keep you warm when it (finally!) gets cooler that’s even better. Let’s take a look at some fun patchwork blanket knitting patterns.

If you want to keep it super simple, you can just make blocks of garter stitch and sew them together, like the beginner’s patchwork baby blanket from Mini Baa Baa or the color block blanket from Make and Do Crew. Both projects are worked in strips and sew together, with the baby version calling for two strands of DK or light worsted weight yarn held together and the larger one using bulky yarn.

Add a little more texture with the mixed blocks of the cottage quilt throw from Mama in a Stitch. This one combines garter stitch and seed stitch and uses worsted weight yarn. She used a crochet join to make the chains on top of the blocks, but you can join them however you like. It calls for eight colors but you can use what you have, and there are three size options.

Get a real sampler style patchwork blanket with this design from Knit Sew Make. It calls for worsted weight yarn and has four size options. All of the patterns just use knit and purl stitches so this one is still pretty easy for beginners.

If you want a more complex colorwork project that will keep you entertained all season, try the Peace by Piece blanket pattern from Needle and Feather. This one is made up of two color colorwork blocks and calls for worsted weight yarn. You can choose to use just a few of the blocks and repeat them more often, or make multiples of the whole set.

The knitted patchwork recipe from Martine Ellis (free on Ravelry) uses mitered squares in fingering weight yarn, so it’s perfect for using up all your leftover sock yarn and mini skeins. This one is a tutorial more than a pattern so you can make your blanket as big as you like or keep going until you run out of yarn.

Susan B. Anderson’s 100 Squares blanket (find it on Ravelry) has a lot of mitered squares, too, but they’re arranged in fun ways and includes some quilt inspired designs as well. This one also is a bit of method more than pattern but it sure looks like a lot of fun for using all the leftovers.

Of course you can totally improvise a patchwork blanket using the yarn and stitches you like, but I hope these patterns inspire you to look at your leftover yarn in a new way.

Have you read?