Camila the Record-Breaking Star

Camila the Star

By: Alicia Salazar

Narrated by: uncredited

After reading about kid record-breakers, Camila dreams of breaking a record of her own. But which world record should she tackle? No matter what she tries, Camila finds that breaking records is hard. Will she ever become a record-breaking star?

©2021 Alicia Salazar (P)2024 Capstone Publishers, Inc.

Critic reviews

This entry in the “Camila the Star” series features seven-year-old Camila, who hears about someone her age who is a star for breaking a world record and appears on a magazine cover. She is determined to get her own magazine cover by becoming a record-breaker, too. After myriad missteps, she writes a song with a goal of 1000 plays on a song platform. It takes a while, but she does earn the record; the magazine cover is homemade, but the thrill is just as real. This title owes a debt to Jacqueline Jules’s “Sophia Martinez” series while reaching out to a slightly younger audience. Camila’s family is introduced to readers by way of a labeled picture with its own chapter heading, allowing Salazar to later incorporate them into the story without additional description. The Spanish-English glossary is located at the beginning of the book. The text, limited to three or four short sentences per page, is accompanied by bright cartoonish explanatory illustrations. Despite these efforts to simplify Camila’s adventures for a younger reader, there are a few clumsy textual references, like the one that suggests the song could be a “platinum” record instead of going “viral.” VERDICT This fairly derivative title may meet the needs of collections that rely on easy chapter books. (Lisa Lehmuller, Paul Cuffee Maritime Charter Sch., Providence)