A poignant, sincere, empathetic glimpse at family border separation.
Argueta tells the story of 10-year-old Jimena Pérez, who unexpectedly journeys from her home in El Salvador to the U.S.
Told in a sequence of short poems first in Spanish and consequently in English, this poignant story introduces Jimena’s home through her senses: “Me gusta / el color de las zanahorias…. / Pero más me gusta / el olor de los marañones”; “I like the color / of the carrots…. / But what I like most / is the smell of the cashew fruit.” When young boys from a neighborhood gang threaten Jimena’s schoolmate, Jimena’s parents, fearing for their own daughter, decide that Jimena and her mother will join family living in Texas. After exiting El Salvador and later Guatemala, Jimena and her mother climb atop a train—La Bestia, known for its ruthlessness and peril—and later trek by foot. Authorities find Jimena and her mama and pull them from each other. “I feel alone. / Other kids are crying. / We’re little birds / alone and sad / in a metal cage.” The harrowing tale ends in a detention cell for children, yet in this realistic hell, Jimena manages to find some small hope. It leaves Jimena scared and uncertain, and it won’t be a stretch for readers to understand that the questions they have about Jimena apply to far too many real-life children like her.
A poignant, sincere, empathetic glimpse at family border separation. (Verse fiction. 8-14)Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-55885-889-3
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Piñata Books/Arte Público
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this...
Sentenced to a brutal juvenile detention camp for a crime he didn't commit, a wimpy teenager turns four generations of bad family luck around in this sunburnt tale of courage, obsession, and buried treasure from Sachar (Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, 1995, etc.).
Driven mad by the murder of her black beau, a schoolteacher turns on the once-friendly, verdant town of Green Lake, Texas, becomes feared bandit Kissin' Kate Barlow, and dies, laughing, without revealing where she buried her stash. A century of rainless years later, lake and town are memories—but, with the involuntary help of gangs of juvenile offenders, the last descendant of the last residents is still digging. Enter Stanley Yelnats IV, great-grandson of one of Kissin' Kate's victims and the latest to fall to the family curse of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; under the direction of The Warden, a woman with rattlesnake venom polish on her long nails, Stanley and each of his fellow inmates dig a hole a day in the rock-hard lake bed. Weeks of punishing labor later, Stanley digs up a clue, but is canny enough to conceal the information of which hole it came from. Through flashbacks, Sachar weaves a complex net of hidden relationships and well-timed revelations as he puts his slightly larger-than-life characters under a sun so punishing that readers will be reaching for water bottles.
Good Guys and Bad get just deserts in the end, and Stanley gets plenty of opportunities to display pluck and valor in this rugged, engrossing adventure. (Fiction. 9-13)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 978-0-374-33265-5
Page Count: 233
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A memorable story of kindness, courage and wonder.
After being home-schooled for years, Auggie Pullman is about to start fifth grade, but he’s worried: How will he fit into middle school life when he looks so different from everyone else?
Auggie has had 27 surgeries to correct facial anomalies he was born with, but he still has a face that has earned him such cruel nicknames as Freak, Freddy Krueger, Gross-out and Lizard face. Though “his features look like they’ve been melted, like the drippings on a candle” and he’s used to people averting their eyes when they see him, he’s an engaging boy who feels pretty ordinary inside. He’s smart, funny, kind and brave, but his father says that having Auggie attend Beecher Prep would be like sending “a lamb to the slaughter.” Palacio divides the novel into eight parts, interspersing Auggie’s first-person narrative with the voices of family members and classmates, wisely expanding the story beyond Auggie’s viewpoint and demonstrating that Auggie’s arrival at school doesn’t test only him, it affects everyone in the community. Auggie may be finding his place in the world, but that world must find a way to make room for him, too.
A memorable story of kindness, courage and wonder. (Fiction. 8-14)Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-375-86902-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2011
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