As so many of our children are immigrants or children of immigrants, we need more of these stories, especially when they are...
“It really is possible to feel / like two people / at the same time, / when your parents / grandparents / memories / words / come from two / different / worlds.”
Poet and novelist Engle has won a Newbery Honor, the Pura Belpré Award, and the Américas Award, among others. Of Cuban-American descent, she has mostly written about Cuba and Cuban history. This time she brings readers her own childhood. Employing free verse, she narrates growing up in Los Angeles in the 1950s and early ’60s torn by her love of two countries: the United States, where she was born and raised, and Cuba, where her mother was from and where she spent vacations visiting family. Woven into the fabric of her childhood is the anxiety of deteriorating relations between the two countries as the Cuban revolution takes place, affecting both her family and the two countries at large. This is also the time when Engle discovers books and her own poetry as safe places to retreat to. Though it is a very personal story, it is also one that touches on issues affecting so many immigrants, as when she wonders: “Is there any way that two people / from faraway places / can ever really / understand each other’s / daydreams?”
As so many of our children are immigrants or children of immigrants, we need more of these stories, especially when they are as beautifully told as this one. (Cold War timeline, author’s note) (Poetry/memoir. 10 & up)Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4814-3522-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
Overall, though, these poems, illustrations and substantial notes combine well to lend a rounded portrait of this American...
A sonnet sequence encapsulates the biography of one of America’s most intriguing poets, Emily Dickinson.
Loosely following Shakespearean and the occasional Petrarchan rhyme schemes, Yolen cleverly adopts personae of important figures in Dickinson’s life—including the voice of the poet herself—to reveal key elements of her biography. Aiming to “tell the truth” of Dickinson’s life, Yolen effectively conveys the importance of family and nature, privacy, imagination and independence in Dickinson’s famously unconventional existence. Averse to traditional schooling and organized religion, the poet reveals: “I learned the spelling of the bee, / The mathematics of the rose / … / I found more in the books of air; / My higher education won / From every bird found flying there.” Yolen also offers a sympathetic portrait of Dickinson’s reclusiveness—“What need for me an open door / When in myself is so much more?”—and idiosyncratic dress: “sometimes a white dress is only that, / It keeps the daily choices few.” Accompanying the sonnets, Kelley’s dark and chunky pastels underscore Dickinson’s interior life. Occasionally, attempts to echo Dickinson’s poetic surprises yield muddled results, as in “Hedges,” where Yolen’s Dickinson depicts her shrubs as: “My soldiers, steady in a row, / Their helmets verdigrised by God, / Wearing epaulettes of crow.”
Overall, though, these poems, illustrations and substantial notes combine well to lend a rounded portrait of this American poet every young reader needs to discover. (Picture book/poetry. 10-14)Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-56846-215-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Creative Editions/Creative Company
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2012
Provides a human face, both beautiful and scarred, for the undocumented—a must-read.
2003 Pulitzer Prize–winning author Nazario’s critically acclaimed book Enrique’s Journey, a heart-wrenching account of one young man’s journey to migrate illegally from Honduras to the United States to find the mother who left when he was 5, has been newly adapted for young people.
Nazario’s vividly descriptive narrative recreates the trek that teenage Enrique made from Honduras through Mexico on the tops of freight trains. This adaptation does not gloss over or omit the harrowing dangers—beatings, rape, maiming and murder—faced by migrants coming north from Central America. The material is updated to present current statistics about immigration, legal and illegal, and also addresses recent changes in the economic and political climates of the U.S., Mexico and Honduras, including the increased danger of gang violence related to drug trafficking in Mexico. The book will likely inspire reflection, discussion and debate about illegal immigration among its intended audience. But the facts and figures never overwhelm the human story. The epilogue allows readers who are moved by Enrique to follow the family’s tragedies and triumphs since the book’s original publication; the journey does not end upon reaching the United States.
Provides a human face, both beautiful and scarred, for the undocumented—a must-read. (epilogue, afterword, notes) (Nonfiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-0385743273
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
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