Rafi said that Don Quijote, like Dom, messed everything up most of the time. And that’s exactly what happened. At the end of their knightly adventures, both Dom and Don Quijote face the truth about themselves. But unlike Don Quijote, who dies at the end of the book after having set his life right, Dom goes on. With two new friends, she sets out for other adventures based on other books.
Acknowledgments
Mil gracias de mi corazón. To my Reston writer’s group: Teddi, Judy, and Kim, for helping me birth Dom and her band; and to Cathey, Della, and Michelle, way back when, for giving me the confidence to pursue my dream of writing. To my Arlington writer’s groups: Thank you for taking me on and sharing your love, suggestions, and patience. To Jacquie, for always reading everything I send her way, and to all my Guild friends for welcoming, supporting, and encouraging me. To SCBWI Mid-Atlantic: Thank you for providing fertile soil in which to grow.
To Natalie Lakosil, my agent: Thank you for believing in me and for your ability to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse, as well as other superpowers. You are always on my shoulder.
To Aly Heller, editor extraordinaire, for in-person and virtual hugs. For believing, like me, that kids of all skin tones, ethnicities, nationalities, religions, and genders need to see themselves in the pages of children’s books as no different from their peers. Thanks for your gentle touch.
To Mari Lobo and Fátima Anaya, who see Dominguita exactly like I picture her.
To my kids and grands: Your love and pride keep me afloat. MK, thanks for insisting Dom Capote should be a girl.
To Lou, forever my love, cheerleader, and champion: You’re the one who makes it all possible.
More from this Series
Captain Dom's Treasure
Book 2
All for One
Book 3
Keep reading for a preview of
Captain Dom's Treasure
by
Terry Catasus Jennings
1 What Dom Found in the Book
Dom was at the Mundytown library when it opened. She wore a bandanna around her head, squishing her pigtails. And a leather eye patch with a shiny gold P for “pirate” covered her eye. Her brother, Rafi, had given her the patch before she left home. Along with a compass.
“Nice look, Dominguita!” Mrs. Booker, the librarian, looked up over reading glasses. “What can I do for you?”
“Captain Dom,” she corrected. “You know Dominguita means ‘little Sunday’ in Spanish, right? No one will respect a pirate named after a day of the week!”
“Sorry for that, Captain Dom. I can see how that could be a problem.” Mrs. Booker straightened some papers on her desk. Then she nodded. “You continuing your pirate studies?”
Dom didn’t quite know what to say. She still loved the books Mrs. Booker had given her. The ones about Anne Bonny and Mary Read—the best pirates ever. And she didn’t want to hurt the librarian’s feelings. “I’m not done with studying. Honest. But I think we’re ready to actually do something, you know? Like look for treasure.”
“Treasure?”
“Me and my mates. Pancho Sanchez and this new girl who’s visiting her grandmother. Her name’s Steph. We’re going on a pirate adventure.”
“I see.”
“I need two copies of Treasure Island. One for each of them. You can’t be a pirate without reading Treasure Island.”
“I can’t agree with you more.” Mrs. Booker touched the mouse in her hand to wake up her computer. “You already checked the shelves?”
Dom nodded. “Couldn’t find any. My brother, Rafi, agreed to make us a treasure map, so that we can actually look for something. But we want to really act like pirates.”
After a few clicks, the librarian shook her head. “We do own two.… Looks like someone checked them both out a couple of days ago.”
“Hmm,” Dom said. “How about another library? Anything close?”
“Wait, wait. We have our Special Books Collection in the basement. I think we have one there.” She reached for a notebook swollen with yellow, curling pages. “The librarian before me couldn’t get rid of some books. I loved her for it.”
After turning a few pages, Mrs. Booker gave a little happy cry. “Yep. Looks like we’re in luck.”
If there was anything Dom liked better than a book, it was an old book. She kept twelve adventure books her grandmother had read as a little girl in the bookcase next to her bed. They were ready to fall apart, but she loved every one of them. Even though her abuela had moved to Florida, the books made Dom feel connected to her in some way. Dom read them all the time. There was no way she’d miss a chance to go down to the basement to see other old books.
She followed Mrs. Booker down the twisty steps without being invited. The smell in the stacks made her as happy as the smell of sweet buñuelos.
And it made her sneeze.
Which startled Mrs. Booker.
And made her look back.
Caught!
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Dom said. “I know I shouldn’t have come.…”
“Are you kidding?” Mrs. Booker said. “You’re welcome here! I love this place too!”
The librarian stopped at a table that stretched from side to side at the end of the room. The label above it said SPECIAL BOOKS COLLECTION. Books were piled four deep in neat columns. The first book Dom saw was Little Women.
“Mmmm.” Mrs. Booker’s fingers ran over the columns. “K, M, R. It should be here.” She stopped at the fourth column over, bottom row, and lifted books until she found the one she was looking for. She blew the dust off the cover and handed it to Dom. “See, I told you it was beautiful—all yours.”
This was a good time to start using pirate talk, Dom thought.
“It’ll be pure gold to me, I promise.”
* * *
With a wave, Dom left the librarian. Pancho and Steph were waiting for her at Yuca, Yuca, the restaurant that belonged to Pancho’s uncle. El Señor Prieto had agreed to feed them during their recent knightly adventures if Dom swept his sidewalk.
She should run. Her mates were waiting, ready to set out on the treasure hunt.
But something about the old book called to her.
She wanted to touch it. Smell its oldness. Take it all in.
By herself.
She stopped at a table by the door and traced the gold letters on the red cover with her fingers. They were barely raised, rounded. She opened it. Carefully. As if it were holy. It was printed in 1947. A couple of years before her abuela was born.
It was not like any other book she’d read. It was crackly, yellow. Some of the type was fancy. Very fancy. With full-color pictures of fighting pirates and black-and-white sketches scattered in the chapters.
Dom thumbed through the loose, worn pages. And there, between pages 168 and 169, she found a flyer. Folded. Pink.
An advertisement for Kowalski’s Grocery!
Dom smiled. Mr. Kowalski had helped in their knightly adventure too. He’d made her a knight!
Next to Kowalski’s ad was one for Beauty Is You! on Grant Street. That beauty shop was Smart Clips now. That’s where Dom’s mami got her hair cut. The bottom half of the flyer said the carnival would be in Mundytown from June 20 to June 23. What year? It didn’t say. Not on that side. She flipped it over.
And stopped breathing.
On the other side was a map.
X marked a spot.
2 What Dom Did at Yuca, Yuca
Dom barreled into Yuca, Yuca. Her breathing exploded in short, loud bursts. “I. Found. A. M-m-map. Ifoundamap. Ifoundamap.”
“Whoa! Whoa! What about ‘Shiver my timbers’ and ‘Ahoy, mates’?” Pancho was tall and hefty. He wore a twisted bandanna to hold the mass of black hair on his head away from his forehead. A plastic sword hung from his belt.
“You mean Rafi already gave you the map?” Steph scrunched her forehead. Her freckles danced. She was not dressed like a pirate.
“No. No! Well, yes. We
have a map.” Dom drew her crew into a huddle. “But not from Rafi. I have something better. Just now. At the library. I found a treasure map. A real treasure map!”
“But why don’t we wait and use Rafi’s map?” Steph said.
“This treasure map is real. I promise!” Dom whispered, holding up the book. “I found it between pages 168 and 169.”
Dom didn’t wait for her mates to answer. “It’s like the map in Treasure Island. It has notes and two Xs and the numbers ten and thirty-seven.”
Now Pancho and Steph nodded. Maybe they were getting it.
“I can’t wait to pretend to find the treasure with it,” Steph said.
“THIS IS NOT PRETEND!” Dom yelled. “THIS IS A REAL TREASURE MAP!”
Everyone in the restaurant looked up. Her mates. El Señor Prieto. The cooks and waiters. Even a blond girl who was having flan at ten o’clock in the morning.
Dom straightened up. “It’s a real pretend treasure map, Steph. Rafi made it for us. You’re right.” Her voice was the most normal she could manage. And loud. So everyone could hear her. “And WE NEED TO WEIGH ANCHOR AND SEARCH FOR IT. RIGHT NOW.” She pulled her two friends out of their chairs and through the door of the restaurant. She ran. She didn’t stop until she was three blocks away. She knew she should have waited for Steph, but it was as if she were being pushed by a hurricane. Finally, she stopped in an alley between apartment buildings, where she plopped down on the steps by a back door of a building.
* * *
“What was that all about?” Pancho asked, panting, after he and Steph caught up to her.
“I can’t believe I blabbed! I told everybody about the map.”
“But isn’t it a pretend treasure map?” Steph dropped next to Dom.
“It’s not!” Dom cried. “It’s real. Real. Real. I know it is. And now everybody knows we have a real treasure map.”
Pancho waved her off. “Don’t worry. Nobody pays attention to us. They don’t care.”
“But I talked so loud!”
Pancho shrugged. “Last week we were knights. This week we’re pirates. My uncle knows we’re playing. Everyone knows we’re playing.”
Dom sighed. “You think?”
“Sure. Nobody takes us seriously.”
“Oh.” Dom wasn’t sure which was worse, giving away the secret or that no one took them seriously.
Steph patted her on the back. “Come on, Cap’n,” she said. “Show us the map!”
Dom pulled it out. She held the precious paper by the corners. Her fingers shook as she smoothed it out on her lap. Even with the noises of the street, their breathing was all she could hear.
Steph whistled. “Could be for real.”
“It’s real,” Pancho agreed.
Dom grinned. “I told you!”
She traced the shape on the paper with her index finger. A rectangle. Sort of. One of the two long sides was missing a half circle. As if someone had taken out a chunk with a cookie cutter. There was a small x. There was also a larger X, in blue. It was north of the small x.
Which was only north if you agreed that the random, half-finished arrow on the right of the paper pointed north.
Which may not be a good thing to agree to.
Because it looked more like a chicken’s foot.
And there was absolutely nothing else that showed north.
Whoever drew the map scattered four lines with circles on top—like lollipops—inside the rectangle. The number thirty-seven was an addition. In different ink.
But then, at the bottom of the page, scraggly, like the X, a note: The sun will show when it’s highest in the sky. Dial, diagonal, park.
In neat handwriting: Ten feet from X to x.
All three stared at the paper for more than a minute. Dom broke the silence. “Wow, huh? It’s good enough to yell huzzah!”
Pancho nodded. “Shiver my timbers, it’s a puzzle.”
Steph shook her head. “But it doesn’t say where this is. It could be on another planet.”
Steph was right. The buccaneers in Treasure Island knew where the treasure was. They had coordinates. They knew hills, and creeks, and coves. They could use a compass to find the place. But Dom still had a feeling this was a real map.
“So here’s the deal,” Dom said. “The flyer is about Mundytown. The book was in the Mundytown library. We look in Mundytown. My mami won’t let me go anywhere else anyway.”
Steph shook her head. “I just don’t want to be going all over everywhere. That’s why Rafi’s map…”
Dom had to get Steph to agree, to get off this kick about Rafi’s map. “I think gold dust of you,” she told her friend. “I want you to be ship’s doctor. That’s the next most important post after captain.”
Steph scrunched her face again. But it was a happier face.
“Whoa! I’m glad we’re out of that clove hitch,” Dom said.
“Knotty problem,” Pancho translated before Steph even asked.
“Now we’re getting somewhere, buccaneers!” Dom gave them each a high five. “Pancho, will you be first mate?”
Pancho saluted. “Aye, aye, Cap’n.”
“So what do we need?”
“It talks about parks, right?” Pancho pointed to the map. “We need maps to figure out where parks are. And a compass.”
“Gran gave me lots of maps so I won’t get lost now that I’m living here.”
“Rafi gave me a compass before I left this morning.”
“How about swords and gullies?” Pancho asked.
“Gullies?” Steph asked.
“Knives,” Pancho said. “Pirate knives. Pirates always have swords and gullies. Who knows? If we get hot on the trail of this treasure and someone finds out…” Pancho patted the plastic sword hanging from his belt.
“I’ll see what I can find at Fuentes Salvage,” Dom said. “But we might as well forget the gullies. I don’t think he’ll let us have any even if he has some.”
“Shovels, pics, and stuff to dig treasure with,” said Steph.
“Well, jump on the yardarm, Doc, that’s a brilliant idea!”
“Lunch!” Pancho said. “I’ll run back to Yuca, Yuca and get ham biscuits.”
It was time to wrap things up, the captain thought. “Eight bells. Forenoon watch. Bring your stuff to the conference room at the library. I don’t think we should meet at Yuca, Yuca for now.”
“Aye, aye, Cap’n!” Pancho saluted, and turned to leave.
Steph followed him. “Wait, wait. What’s eight bells, anyway?”
“It’s ship’s time,” Pancho said. “Noon.”
“I’m gonna have to read Treasure Island tonight.”
“Watch the movie,” Pancho said. “It’ll be faster.”
Continue Reading…
Captain Dom's Treasure
Terry Catasus Jennings
About the Author and Illustrator
On September 11, 1961, Terry Catasús Jennings landed in the United States after a short flight from Cuba. On September 12, she was enrolled in seventh grade in an American school. Her family, including her father who had been jailed during the Bay of Pigs invasion, was now in a free country. The only catch for twelve-year-old Terry was that she could count in English and recite the days of the week and the months of the year, but not much more. Because she was often the only Cuban in her school—even through college— Terry knows what it’s like to be different, to be the new kid on the block. She is delighted to have the opportunity, with Definitely Dominguita, to portray a child of immigrants who is no different from her peers—other than that she loves the classics (like Terry did as a child) and lives for Cuban food.
Fátima Anaya is a graphic designer and children’s illustrator based in El Salvador. She loves working on projects about diversity, family, love, and friendship. The Bright Agency has represented her since 2016, on various books, magazines, and other projects for kids.
Aladdin
Simon & Schuster, New York
Visit us
at simonandschuster.com/kids
www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Terry-Catasús-Jennings
www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Fátima-Anaya
Don’t miss the other books in the Definitely Dominguita series!
#2: Captain Dom’s Treasure
Coming soon:
#3: All for One
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ALADDIN
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
First Aladdin paperback edition March 2021
Text copyright © 2021 by Terry Catasús Jennings
Cover and title page illustrations copyright © 2021 by Mari Lobo
Interior illustrations copyright © 2021 by Fátima Anaya
Also available in an Aladdin hardcover edition.
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
ALADDIN and related logo are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or [email protected].
The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.
Book designed by Heather Palisi
The illustrations for this book were rendered digitally.
Cover designed by Heather Palisi
Knight of the Cape Page 6
