An explosion and traffic crash involving a truck filled with pigs on their way to the slaughterhouse leads to unexpected fame and terror for a teenage band in Rosario, Argentina in 1976. Sixteen-year-old Daniel Aguirre and his 15-year-old brother Adrián write a song from the perspective of pigs who end up in the neighborhood’s cooking pots, but in a country rapidly becoming a violent military dictatorship, the song puts all the band members in the crosshairs of the razzia, the political police. Until that moment, Daniel and Adrián only dream of becoming rock stars and paying off the long-overdue rent on their house. Herminia, Adrián’s girlfriend, dreams of having a real family and home instead of a garbage-strewn slum where she lives with a local prostitute after her mother abandoned her. Fito, whose family fled violence in Syria, hopes they won’t have to leave again, and Álvaro longs to escape his abusive father, a right-wing businessman. Daniel talks Álvaro into borrowing his father’s cassette recorder to record a demo that he delivers to a famous musician’s manager in an underground club only minutes before the police storm the event and arrest everyone; mysteriously and without credit, the song about the pig appears on dozens of radio stations throughout South America. But the military knows who created the song, and for all those associated with the band, Río Babel, there is no escape.
The Pura Belpré award-winning author explores the history of her native Argentina in this fast-paced, bleak, but ultimately hopeful novel for teens and adults. The story is narrated by an omniscient angel, one of the band members sacrificed to a fascist regime that during its seven years of rule disappeared over 30,000 Argentine citizens, mostly young people, and executed thousands more in what came to be known as the Dirty War. The angel is speaking to a young woman in the present, a fan of Río Babel, who was killed by a violent man. We know, then, that Río Babel survived through various incarnations, and the music that Daniel, Adrián, and their band members created both endured and served as inspiration for young people who fought and ended the dictatorship and have struggled through multiple generations to create a more just and humane world. While the book is written in English, the novel contains original song lyrics in Spanish, which the bilingual author has translated into English. In the midst of horror and tragedy, it is this music and poetry that helps people to survive to survive the worst and strive for the best.
Written by Yamile Saied Méndez
Levine Querido, 2026
292 pp.
ISBN 978-1-64614-637-6
Reviews and Awards:
Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books
Junior Library Guild Gold Standard
You can buy a copy of Here Ye Mortals here or find it at a library here.
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Lyn Miller-Lachmann is the author of the YA historical novel Torch (Carolrhoda Lab, 2022), winner of the 2023 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature and a 2022 Booklist Editors’ Choice, and the YA verse novel Eyes Open (Carolrhoda Lab 2024), chosen by Booklist as a Top 10 Historical Fiction for Youth, 2024. She wrote the picture book Ways to Play (Levine Querido, 2023), illustrated by Gabriel Alborozo, and co-authored with Zetta Elliott the middle grade verse novel Moonwalking (FSG, 2022). Her nonfiction includes a biography of Temple Grandin in the She Persisted chapter book series from Philomel and Film Makers: 15 Groundbreaking Women Directors (co-authored with Tanisia “Tee” Moore) from Chicago Review Press. She translates books for youth from Portuguese to English, including the 2023 YA graphic novel Pardalita by Joana Estrela, published by Levine Querido, which was named a Batchelder Honor Book in 2024 and the graphic novel Our Beautiful Darkness (Enchanted Lion), by the Angolan author Ondjaki, illustrated by António Jorge Gonçalves, shortlisted for the GLLI Award in 2025.
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