Speak up, Santiago,

by Julio Anta,

In Julio Anta’s graphic novel Speak Up, Santiago!, illustrated by Gabi Mendez, Santiago spends the summer with his abuela in Hillside Valley, where his uncertainty about speaking Spanish makes connecting with others feel intimidating. As he builds friendships in this largely Spanish-speaking community, he navigates embarrassment, belonging, and the courage it takes to use his voice.

Big Idea

Finding your voice does not require perfect words; it requires courage, practice, and people who make room for you. The graphic novel also shows how pictures, dialogue, and silence work together to communicate feelings that a character may struggle to say aloud.

Discussion Questions

1.What makes speaking Spanish feel risky for Santiago? How do the pictures help us understand feelings he does not directly explain?
2.How do Santiago’s experiences with his abuela and his new friends shape his sense of belonging?
3.What is the difference between knowing what you want to say and feeling comfortable saying it? Where do you notice that difference in Santiago’s experience?
4.Choose a moment when another person’s response affects Santiago’s confidence. What could that person do to make the interaction more welcoming?
5.How does the title Speak Up, Santiago! connect to more than speaking loudly? What might 'speaking up' mean by the end of the story?

Classroom Activity

A Pause, a Breath, a Voice

Students examine a conversation in which Santiago’s uncertainty about speaking affects the interaction, then create a six-panel comic about taking a small communication risk. By stretching a moment of hesitation across several panels and choosing where speech finally appears, students explore how graphic storytelling controls pace and builds empathy. Students may use an imagined situation rather than disclose a personal experience, and multilingual writing is welcome but never required.

Lesson Plan

⏱ 45–50 minutes.📦 Copies of the book or an authorized classroom display of selected pages, paper or six-panel comic templates, pencils, erasers, crayons or colored pencils, and sticky notes.

Learning Goals

Explain how Santiago’s responses to language-related challenges develop the themes of confidence and belonging.
Use evidence from both words and illustrations to interpret a character’s feelings.
Create a coherent comic scene using dialogue, expression, gesture, and panel sequencing.
Manipulate pacing by expanding a pause or shortening an exchange.
Discuss language learning respectfully without equating fluency with intelligence or cultural belonging.

Activity Steps

1.Read and discuss a selected conversation involving Santiago’s uncertainty about speaking Spanish. Ask students to distinguish what the text explicitly states from what they infer through the illustrations.
2.Map the interaction in three stages: wanting to connect, hesitating, and responding. Identify which panels make readers linger and which move the exchange forward.
3.Model two versions of a simple greeting: a quick two-panel exchange and a slower version with a silent reaction panel. Discuss how the added pause changes the reader’s understanding.
4.Have students plan and draw a six-panel comic about a character trying to communicate. Require an establishing panel, at least one silent panel, a visible emotional response, and dialogue that moves the interaction forward.
5.Ask partners to read each other’s comics, mark where they slowed down, and explain what created that effect. Students revise one panel, balloon, or transition based on the feedback.
6.Invite optional sharing and collect an exit response: 'One choice that helped my reader understand the character’s hesitation was…'

Standards Connections

ELA: CCSS RL.5.3 — Compare and contrast characters, settings, or events using specific details. Suggested grade-five alignment; adapt to the class’s grade level.
ELA: CCSS RL.5.7 — Analyze how visual elements contribute to meaning, tone, or beauty in a text.
ELA: CCSS W.5.3 — Develop narratives using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.
ELA: CCSS SL.5.1 — Participate effectively in collaborative discussions, building on others’ ideas.
SEL and visual arts: Develop self-awareness, social awareness, and visual literacy by interpreting emotions and designing purposeful image–text relationships.

Pace-Write-Read Study with Pace-Write It!

Speak Up, Santiago! offers a useful way to study the distance between wanting to speak and actually speaking. Santiago’s uncertainty about Spanish makes conversation emotionally significant: an ordinary exchange can carry the weight of embarrassment, hope, or a desire to belong. In a graphic novel, readers encounter that emotional time through panel sequences, facial expressions, gestures, and the relationship between dialogue and silence. Begin the pacing study with a selected conversation, asking students where they linger and what makes them move ahead. The Pace-Write-Read cycle turns those observations into craft practice. Students first notice how a scene allocates space to speech, hesitation, and response; then they write and draw a short interaction using similar tools; finally, a partner reads it and reports the pace they experienced. Emphasize that fewer words do not automatically mean faster reading: a nearly wordless panel can invite careful attention. Santiago’s story helps students see that pacing is not simply speed—it is a way of showing whose feelings matter and giving readers time to understand them.

Element	How to notice or teach it in the novel
1. Pacing	Compare an exchange in which Santiago hesitates with one in which conversation flows more easily. Track how panel count, dialogue, and reaction images shape the time readers spend in each moment.
2. Plot	Map how Santiago’s summer with his abuela and his developing friendships create opportunities to communicate. Separate the external events from the internal change in his willingness to speak.
3. Prosody	Read a selected exchange aloud, using the lettering, punctuation, and expressions as clues to phrasing and emphasis. Discuss how an uncertain delivery changes the pace without imitating or mocking an accent.
4. Word	Study a short word or phrase Santiago uses in an important interaction and consider why it matters in context. Ask how replacing it with a longer explanation would change the scene’s pace.
5. Concept	Explore the distinction between language proficiency and belonging through Santiago’s experiences. Have students identify a scene that complicates the idea that someone must speak perfectly to participate.
6. Voice & Worldview	Examine how Santiago’s language-related worries shape his interpretation of social situations. Contrast what he fears an interaction means with what other characters’ words and actions actually support.
7. Point of View	Identify whose feelings and knowledge guide the reader through a selected scene. Redraw one moment from his abuela’s or a friend’s perspective and discuss what becomes more or less visible.
8. Setting & Place	Study how Hillside Valley’s social and linguistic environment affects Santiago’s comfort. Use background details from selected panels to explain how place influences an interaction rather than merely decorating it.
9. Original Characters	Compare Santiago’s expressions, gestures, and speech with those of his abuela or a new friend. Identify specific choices that make each character recognizable beyond their role in the plot.
10. Dialogue	Examine what a conversation reveals about Santiago’s wish to connect and his uncertainty about speaking. Test how removing one balloon changes both the meaning and the timing.
11. Details	Look closely at a reaction panel for small details in posture, eyes, or hands. Explain how those details communicate hesitation or confidence without adding exposition.
12. Descriptions	Translate a panel showing Santiago in a social setting into two sentences of prose. Compare how written description and visual description deliver information at different speeds.
13. Firsts	Locate an early interaction in a new situation during Santiago’s summer. Discuss why unfamiliar people, places, or expectations can make a brief exchange feel momentous.
14. Immediacy & Engagement	Choose a panel sequence that places readers close to Santiago’s uncertainty. Ask which visual or verbal choices make the situation feel present rather than merely reported.
15. Story Scenes, Summaries & Structures	Distinguish a fully shown conversation from a passage that moves more quickly across events. Discuss why the creators might devote more space to an emotionally important interaction.
16. Tension / Suspense / Surprise	Follow a moment when Santiago is unsure how another person will respond. Identify what readers are waiting to learn and how delaying the response creates social tension.
17. Flashback, Flash-Forward, Cliffhanger	Check the selected pages for an actual time shift or an unresolved ending rather than assuming these devices occur. If none appears, explain how inserting a memory or delaying a response would alter Santiago’s scene.
18. Page Turns and Chapter Breaks	Examine what readers know before and after a page turn in a significant interaction. Where applicable, discuss how a chapter ending pauses Santiago’s experience or encourages continued reading.
19. Pace & Creativity	Redesign one conversational beat in two panels and then in five. Compare which version better captures Santiago’s emotional experience and explain why.
20. Play	Invite students to experiment with balloon shapes, panel sizes, and silent reactions in a scene inspired by Santiago’s effort to connect. Treat each version as a craft experiment rather than a test of drawing skill.
21. Performance	Perform a selected conversation twice, first with minimal pauses and then with pauses suggested by the images. Discuss which performance better matches the evidence on the page.
22. Personality	Track how Santiago behaves when he feels uncertain compared with when he feels more comfortable. Ask which traits remain consistent and which behaviors change with the situation.
23. Humor	If students identify a humorous moment, examine the setup, reaction, and timing that make it work. Distinguish shared warmth from humor that would make a language learner the target.
24. Pause	Look for a moment when an image gives readers time to register Santiago’s feelings before the conversation continues. Add a silent panel to a student comic and test whether it creates a meaningful pause.
25. Poetry / Poetic Devices	Check a selected passage for sound patterns, figurative language, or repeated visual imagery without assuming the dialogue is poetic. Students can turn Santiago’s wish to connect into a brief poem and compare its rhythm with the comic scene.
26. Repetition	Look for repeated words, expressions, or types of interactions across Santiago’s summer. Discuss how a repeated situation can reveal change when his response becomes different.
27. Rhythm	Trace the pattern of speech panels and reaction panels in a conversation. Describe the reading rhythm as steady, interrupted, or accelerating, and support that description with page evidence.
28. Punctuation	Inspect the punctuation in a selected exchange for clues to emphasis, interruption, or uncertainty. Revise a student-created line with different punctuation and read both versions aloud.
29. Questions	Examine how a question invites Santiago to participate or puts pressure on him to respond. Discuss how a welcoming question differs from one that feels like a test.
30. Compare-Contrast	Compare an earlier and a later interaction involving Santiago’s willingness to speak. Use both language and images to explain what changes and what remains challenging.
31. Objects	Choose an object actually visible in a scene with Santiago and consider whether it supports setting, action, or connection. Avoid assigning symbolic meaning unless the story provides evidence.
32. Threes	Test a three-beat sequence inspired by Santiago: an invitation, a hesitation, and a response. Compare it with the book’s actual sequencing rather than assuming every interaction follows this pattern.
33. Lists	Create a short list of the thoughts a reader might infer from Santiago’s behavior, clearly labeling these as interpretations. Compare the speed of reading that list with encountering the same emotions through panels.
34. White Space & Negative Space	Study the gutters, open backgrounds, and space around figures on a selected page. Ask whether those spaces make readers pause, focus on an expression, or move cleanly between moments.
35. Art & Graphics	Analyze how Gabi Mendez’s illustrations work with Anta’s text to convey Santiago’s feelings. Identify one place where the image supplies information the dialogue alone would not provide.
36. Interactives & Gamification	Make a classroom 'pace detective' challenge in which students locate a pause, a reaction, and a transition in selected pages. This is a teaching extension, not a claim that the book contains interactive game features.
37. Placement	Follow the placement of balloons and figures through a selected conversation. Discuss how their arrangement guides reading order and controls when readers encounter Santiago’s response.
38. Form	Explain why the graphic-novel form is useful for a story about difficulty speaking: a character can communicate through expressions and actions as well as words. Compare a short prose retelling with the original scene.
39. Dummy	Create a rough, folded-paper dummy of a short comic inspired by Santiago’s communication challenges. Use stick figures to test panel order and a page-turn pause before making finished artwork.
40. Passion	Ask what Santiago’s efforts to connect suggest he cares about, using evidence from his choices. Encourage students to give their own comic character a meaningful reason to speak so that the pacing serves an emotional purpose.

Pace-Write It!

20-minute Pace-Write-It! task: 'Before the Words.' Minutes 0–4: Revisit a short exchange in which Santiago’s uncertainty about Spanish affects his participation; identify the invitation to speak, his reaction, and the other person’s response. Minutes 4–6: Discuss how the images communicate something beyond the spoken words. Minutes 6–13: Students create a four-panel imagined interaction inspired by Santiago’s summer: someone invites a character into a conversation, the character hesitates, the other person makes room for a response, and the character tries speaking. Include one silent panel and no more than three speech balloons; students may write in any language they know or use English throughout. Minutes 13–17: Partners read the comics and point to the moment where they slowed down, explaining which visual or verbal choice caused it. Minutes 17–20: Students revise one pacing choice and complete the reflection, 'I gave this moment more time because…' Label the comics as student-created scenes, not missing scenes from the book.