Young Jamie is staying with his father's sister while his widowed mother looks for a job in New England. He's an obliging, rather timid boy, unfamiliar with his aunt and uncle and their West Virginia community, uncomplaining about Aunt Elena's stern, inexplicable insistence on keeping an eye on him. Soon after he arrives, he meets an old man who explains that he's Jamie's Grandpa. Grandpa quickly establishes a bond with the lonely boy by making shadows with his hands—a bobcat and (Jamie's special favorite) Tobias, a dog—telling him stories about his animated figures and teaching Jamie to make them. Left alone on one occasion, Jamie finds Grandpa and spends a happy, innocent day with him. Aunt Elena, distraught, concludes that Grandpa is a bad influence and that the two should be kept apart. This understated story holds attention with its air of quiet mystery. Jamie's dad Bill, it's suggested, may not have been what Jamie has imagined: Was he a hero in the fire in which he died, or did he start it? Perhaps easygoing Grandpa had encouraged his son's wildness—hence Elena's concern. Meanwhile, the shadows make an appropriately elusive image: in some ways, Jamie is like his dad—he even, in a dramatic concluding incident, saves Grandpa from a fire; but he is more like the shadow of what Bill might have been. Like Paulsen's The Cookcamp (p. 50/C-10), a sensitive, evocative story of a solitary child among adults who are new to him. (Fiction. 8-11)
Pub Date: May 10, 1991
ISBN: 0-374-36761-2
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1991
Simple, bella, un regalo permenente: simple and beautiful, a gift that will stay.
Renowned Latin American writer Alvarez has created another story about cultural identity, but this time the primary character is 11-year-old Miguel Guzmán.
When Tía Lola arrives to help the family, Miguel and his hermana, Juanita, have just moved from New York City to Vermont with their recently divorced mother. The last thing Miguel wants, as he's trying to fit into a predominantly white community, is a flamboyant aunt who doesn't speak a word of English. Tía Lola, however, knows a language that defies words; she quickly charms and befriends all the neighbors. She can also cook exotic food, dance (anywhere, anytime), plan fun parties, and tell enchanting stories. Eventually, Tía Lola and the children swap English and Spanish ejercicios, but the true lesson is "mutual understanding." Peppered with Spanish words and phrases, Alvarez makes the reader as much a part of the "language" lessons as the characters. This story seamlessly weaves two culturaswhile letting each remain intact, just as Miguel is learning to do with his own life. Like all good stories, this one incorporates a lesson just subtle enough that readers will forget they're being taught, but in the end will understand themselves, and others, a little better, regardless of la lengua nativa—the mother tongue.
Simple, bella, un regalo permenente: simple and beautiful, a gift that will stay. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-80215-0
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This standout novella lustrously portrays Ana Rosa and the rich simplicity of her family’s daily life in the Dominican Republic. The linked vignettes and elegant prose vitalize the merengue music, colorful houses, as well as the people’s poverty and the tyranny of the government. Each chapter begins with one of Ana Rosa’s lovely rhythmic verses. A poet and writer at age 12, she steals bits of paper to record everything she sees, hears, and imagines. Ana Rosa’s family is very close by necessity, but it is her beloved brother Guario who has the job that supports them. As the novella proceeds, dark shadows begin to slink through the gentle days. We learn that Ana Rosa’s father drinks too much rum and Coke, especially on Sundays, when he becomes a lurching spectacle. Then an official informs the villagers that to build a hotel, the government has sold the land on which their families have lived for generations. The villagers band together, Ana Rosa writes an article, and her brother Guario becomes their passionate leader. But when the day of the standoff arrives, the villager’s words and rocks are nothing against the guardia’s guns and bulldozers. The heartbreaking result is Guario’s death. Without diluting the sorrow, Joseph (Fly, Bessie, Fly, 1998, etc.) illustrates the good arising from the tragedy as the government cancels the hotel project and Ana Rosa begins writing the life of her brother. This is an achingly beautiful story that will awaken profound emotions in the reader. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-11)
Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2000
ISBN: 0-06-028232-0
Page Count: 144
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2000
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