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Summary
Summary
From award-winning author Susan Hood and illustrator Sally Wern Comport comes the extraordinary true tale of the Recycled Orchestra of Paraguay, an orchestra made up of children playing instruments built from recycled trash.
Ada Ríos grew up in Cateura, a small town in Paraguay built on a landfill. She dreamed of playing the violin, but with little money for anything but the bare essentials, it was never an option...until a music teacher named Favio Chávez arrived. He wanted to give the children of Cateura something special, so he made them instruments out of materials found in the trash. It was a crazy idea, but one that would leave Ada--and her town--forever changed. Now, the Recycled Orchestra plays venues around the world, spreading their message of hope and innovation.
Author Notes
Susan Hood is the award-winning author of many books for young readers, including Ada's Violin , Alias Anna , Harboring Hope , The Last Straw , Lifeboat 12 , and Shaking Things Up . Susan is the recipient of the E.B. White Honor Award, two Christopher Awards, the Américas Award, the SCBWI Golden Kite Award, and the Bank Street Flora Stieglitz Straus Award, given to "a distinguished work of nonfiction that serves as an inspiration to young people." In addition to winning many state reading awards, Susan's books have been named a National Jewish Book Awards finalist, a Sydney Taylor Notable Book, a NCTE Notable Poetry Book, a NSTA Best Stem Book of the Year, an Amazon Teachers' Pick, a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection, and a Bank Street Best Book of the Year. Visit her at SusanHoodBooks.com.
Sally Wern Comport has illustrated numerous picture books and novels, including Love Will See You Through: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Six Guiding Beliefs (as told by his niece) ; Brave Margaret: An Irish Adventure ; Hanging Off Jefferson's Nose: Growing Up on Mt. Rushmore ; and the Spy Mice series. She has also translated her picture making skills to various large-scale public, private, and institutional artworks. Sally lives with her husband and two daughters in Annapolis, Maryland, where she operates Art at Large Inc. Learn more at ArtAtLargeInc.com.
Reviews (5)
Horn Book Review
Children living in destitution on a landfill in Paraguay are offered music lessons by environmental engineer Seqor Chavez. Since "it wasn't safe" to have expensive instruments, Chavez fashions instruments out of trash; the kids' "Recycled Orchestra" goes on to international acclaim. Comport combines many techniques to create gorgeous, layered art that captures this remarkable, inspiring true story's essence. An author's note adds details. Websites. (c) Copyright 2016. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
School Library Journal Review
Gr 2-5-Hood tells the story of a real child growing up in an actual place-Cateura-a community of people who live and feed themselves by picking through the tons of trash generated by the capital city of Asunción, Paraguay, and salvaging items to recycle and sell. Despite her bleak surroundings, Ada Ríos liked to imagine each garbage truck was "a box of surprises. One never knew what might be inside." When Ada was 11, a man named Favio Chávez started to hold music classes for the local young people. Since there weren't enough instruments to go around and they were too precious for the kids to take them home to practice, the project seemed doomed to be short-lived. Watching the children play amid the rubble gave Señor Chávez an idea. He enlisted the help of the gancheros (recyclers), and they fashioned cellos from oil drums, flutes out of water pipes, and guitars from packing crates. Ada chose a violin made from an old paint can, an aluminum baking tray, a fork, and pieces of wooden crates. Through hard work and long hours of practice over time, she and the rest of the ragtag crew of kids formed the Recycled Orchestra, and the rest is history, as they've grown and made a name for themselves internationally. Comport's mixed-media collages are nothing short of brilliant as she plays with light and dark throughout. The spreads capture the look and feel of the cramped and stinking landfill, the oppressive heat, and the hardscrabble lives of the residents. They also convey the resourcefulness and warmth of the families and the aspirations of the children. The scenes of the kids embracing their instruments and sharing their joy at making music are absolutely transcendent. "With her violin, Ada could close her eyes and imagine a different life. She could soar on the high, bright, bittersweet notes to a place far away. She could be who she was meant to be." VERDICT A virtuoso piece of nonfiction, gloriously told and illustrated.-Luann Toth, School Library Journal © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Hood's (Rooting for You) beautifully narrated true tale begins in Cateura, a "noisy, stinking, sweltering slum" of Paraguay. That's where Ada Ríos lives with her family, recyclers (gancheros) who collect and sell trash from the nearby landfill. When engineer Favio Chávez begins teaching music to at-risk children there, Ada learns the violin, and she and other students play instruments made from recycled trash. Comport (Love Will See You Through) employs a vibrant collage technique, using pictures of food labels, tires, and other detritus to form colorful, almost ethereal backdrops. Light-infused scenes of gancheros picking through mountains of trash, children playing soccer in Cateura's streets, and Ada practicing violin all include hopeful shades of yellow. Torn bits of a musical score edge out the garbage scraps as the story progresses. When the Recycled Orchestra gains fame, its members perform in some of the world's biggest, brightest cities: "Buried in the trash was music. And buried in themselves was something to be proud of." An author's note expands on this uplifting, instructive story; a Spanish-language edition is available simultaneously. Ages 4-8. Author's agent: Brenda Bowen, Sanford J. Greenburger Associates. Illustrator's agency: Shannon Associates. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Cateura, a town built on a landfill in Paraguay, one of the poorest areas of South America, is where Ada Ríos lives. Most people in the town spend their days searching through the landfill for things that can be sold, and Ada is no different, until the day a man named Favio Chávez offers to start teaching music classes to the children of the neighborhood. There aren't enough instruments to go around, so he improvises, building drums and violins out of objects he finds in the landfill. Ada chooses a violin, and the hodgepodge group of kids slowly becomes an orchestra, eventually gaining confidence and fame, touring around the world. The mixed-media collages are a particular effective medium for this true story, layering images of Ada and the orchestra over the landfill. The nuances of the subject may strike a stronger chord with adults rather than children, but the interesting visuals and the underlying message of hope and perseverance should help this find an audience.--Reagan, Maggie Copyright 2016 Booklist
Kirkus Review
Hood presents the story of a Paraguayan youth orchestra whose instruments are fashioned from garbage collected in the local landfill. Cateura is, literally, "a town made of trash." The dump for the capital city of Asuncin, Cateura receives 1,500 tons of trash daily, and 2,500 families subsist there, with generations of gancheros scouring for recyclable materials like cardboard and plastic. Favio Chvez, an environmental engineer assigned to Cateura to teach the recyclers safety methods, began offering music lessons to children, to help keep them safe. He enlisted a carpenter's expertise in creating instruments from salvaged materials. "They transformed oil drums into cellos, water pipes into flutes, and packing crates into guitars!" Hood's narrative focuses on talented Ada Ros, whose years of dedicated practice on a metal-and-wood violin parallel the orchestra's ascendant fame in Paraguay and internationally. "Ada and her friends flew on their first airplane, stayed in their first hoteland saw sights they never imagined." Comport's complex, digitally enhanced collages combine acrylics, drawing, and layered typographic elements, conveying both the oppressive omnipresence of garbage and the functional beauty of the handcrafted instruments. For a spread celebrating the music's transforming effects, Comport renders musicians and gancheros in silhouette against the landfill, bathed in sunset pinks and golds. Pair with the suggested video links to experience the music of a remarkable, resilient cultural community. (author's note, websites, videos, quotation sources, photographs) (Informational picture book. 4-8) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
