Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Hardwood Creek Library (Forest Lake) | SPA J 861.64 ARG | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Lake Elmo Library | SPA J 861.64 ARG | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Oakdale Library | SPA J 861.64 ARG | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Park Grove Library (Cottage Grove) | SPA J 861.64 ARG | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | SPA J 861.64 ARG | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Stillwater Public Library | SPA J 861.64 ARG | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
An eloquent and timely plea for understanding refugees.
Why are young people leaving their country to walk to the United States to seek a new, safe home? Over 100,000 such children have left Central America. This book of poetry helps us to understand why and what it is like to be them.
This powerful book by award-winning Salvadoran poet Jorge Argueta describes the terrible process that leads young people to undertake the extreme hardships and risks involved in the journey to what they hope will be a new life of safety and opportunity. A refugee from El Salvador''s war in the eighties, Argueta was born to explain the tragic choice confronting young Central Americans today who are saying goodbye to everything they know because they fear for their lives. This book brings home their situation and will help young people who are living in safety to understand those who are not.
Compelling, timely and eloquent, this book is beautifully illustrated by master artist Alfonso Ruano who also illustrated The Composition, considered one of the 100 Greatest Books for Kids by Scholastic''s Parent and Child Magazine.
Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.1
Ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to demonstrate understanding of key details in a text.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.4
Describe how words and phrases (e.g., regular beats, alliteration, rhymes, repeated lines) supply rhythm and meaning in a story, poem, or song.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.7
Use information gained from the illustrations and words in a print or digital text to demonstrate understanding of its characters, setting, or plot.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.3.4
Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, distinguishing literal from nonliteral language.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.3.5
Refer to parts of stories, dramas, and poems when writing or speaking about a text, using terms such as chapter, scene, and stanza; describe how each successive part builds on earlier sections.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.3.7
Explain how specific aspects of a text''s illustrations contribute to what is conveyed by the words in a story (e.g., create mood, emphasize aspects of a character or setting)
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.1
Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.2
Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text; summarize the text.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.5
Explain major differences between poems, drama, and prose, and refer to the structural elements of poems (e.g., verse, rhythm, meter) and drama (e.g., casts of characters, settings, descriptions, dialogue, stage directions) when writing or speaking about a text.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.7
Make connections between the text of a story or drama and a visual or oral presentation of the text, identifying where each version reflects specific descriptions and directions in the text.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.2
Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text, including how characters in a story or drama respond to challenges or how the speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic; summarize the text.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.4
Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative language such as metaphors and similes.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.7
Analyze how visual and multimedia elements contribute to the meaning, tone, or beauty of a text (e.g., graphic novel, multimedia presentation of fiction, folktale, myth, poem).
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.1
Cite textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.2
Determine a theme or central idea of a text and how it is conveyed through particular details; provide a summary of the text distinct from personal opinions or judgments.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.4
Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of a specific word choice on meaning and tone
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.5
Analyze how a particular sentence, chapter, scene, or stanza fits into the overall structure of a text and contributes to the development of the theme, setting, or plot.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.7
Compare and contrast the experience of reading a story, drama, or poem to listening to or viewing an audio, video, or live version of the text, including contrasting what they "see" and "hear" when reading the text to what they perceive when they listen or watch.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.9
Compare and contrast texts in different forms or genres (e.g., stories and poems; historical novels and fantasy stories) in terms of their approaches to similar themes and topics.
Author Notes
Jorge Argueta is an award-winning author of picture books and poetry for young children. He has won the International Latino Book Award, the Américas Book Award, the NAPPA Gold Award and the Independent Publisher Book Award for Multicultural Fiction for Juveniles. His books have also been named to the Américas Award Commended List, the USBBY Outstanding International Books Honor List, Kirkus Reviews Best Children's Books and the Cooperative Children's Book Center Choices. Somos como las nubes / We Are Like the Clouds, illustrated by Alfonso Ruano, won the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, was a Malka Penn Award for Human Rights in Children's Literature honor book and an ALA Notable book, and received many other honors. A native Salvadoran and Pipil Nahua Indian, Jorge Argueta has returned to El Salvador and built a library in his backyard in San Salvador so that children can learn to love books.
Alfonso Ruano is the illustrator of The Composition by Antonio Skármeta, winner of the Jane Addams Children's Book Award and the UNESCO Tolerance Award and an Américas Award Commended title; Tricycle (El triciclo) by Elisa Amado, a USBBY Outstanding International Book; and Somos como las nubes / We Are Like the Clouds by Jorge Argueta, which was featured on many lists, including USBBY's Outstanding International Books and ALA Notable Children's Books. After three decades as the art director for Grupo SM, the world's largest publisher of Spanish-language children's books, he has left to devote more time to illustration and painting.
Elisa Amado is a Guatemalan-born author and translator. Her books have been on the Américas Award Commended List and on USBBY's Outstanding International Books List. She lives in Toronto.Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 3-6-Argueta likens the spirit of refugee and immigrant children from Central America and Mexico to the movement of clouds in this collection of bilingual poetry. Some of these poems successfully evoke the fear and anxiety generated by this exodus from violence and privation. The portrayal of the tattooed Salvadoran gangs in "El barrio la campanera" is particularly visceral. But most of the poems skirt the edge of urgency, creating an emotional disconnect. Apprehension by the U.S. border patrol is a dreaded terror refugees pray to avoid. But the poem "Nos presentamos a la patrulla" ("We Introduce Ourselves to the Border Patrol") couches the nightmare in terms of an innocuous meet-and-greet. In an introductory poem, "Mi barrio," the author describes a rooster eating a Popsicle ("paleta"), but Ruano features the rooster with a lollipop-the alternate definition of the word. This misinterpretation disrupts the cyclical nature of the Popsicle motif carried forth into the concluding poem. Furthermore, the brutal march across the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts claims countless lives every year, but the image depicted implies that the crossing is nothing more onerous than a day hike. VERDICT Despite flaws, this is a much-needed jumping-off point for elementary classroom discussions of refugees and immigration.-Mary Margaret Mercado, Pima County Public Library, Tucson, AZ © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Poems written in Spanish and English poignantly address the struggles of child refugees fleeing Central America for the U.S. Shifting among the viewpoints of several children, the poems recount the sadness of leaving old lives behind and the dangers of the journey: "Don't let us fall/ into the hands of the migra,/ and never in the hands of the traffickers," reads a prayer to Santo Toribio, "saint of the immigrants." Ruano's lush paintings feature surreal flourishes (a rooster in a track suit, tattooed gang members with cyclopean eyes) as well as haunting images of families crossing deserts and crowding onto trains. A sobering but hopeful collection. Ages 7-12. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Argueta's bilingual collection of poems gives voice to the many refugee children who emigrate from Central American countries to the United States in search of safety or better lives. The children in these poems speak of the places left behind, their families, their fears, their hopes, and their dreams. Argueta's poems include whimsical imagery (a smiling river, a dog that can whistle, clouds shaped like whales) but also scary threats (los pintados--"the painted men"--with their hard eyes and snake-tattooed bodies) and the fear of never seeing loved ones again. The poems, written in the first person, present the candid perspective of the children's experiences: holding tightly to a mother's hand; singing to scare away tiredness and fear. Delicate illustrations include both realistic portrayals and surreal depictions that complement the textual imagery. Ruano variously employs muted tones and bright colors, depending on the mood of the poems. The translations into English are well crafted; footnotes clarify regional vocabulary or words in both Spanish and English with culture-specific meanings. alicia k. long (c) Copyright 2017. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
With tenderness and humanity, this bilingual book describes the hopes, fears, and uncertainties of the thousands of displaced children that arrive every year at the southern border of the United States.Every year thousands of children from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico leave their home countries and undertake a perilous journey across hundreds of miles in the hope of reaching the United States. They are fleeing crushing poverty and the fear of violence. Some are fleeing with their families, some are hoping to be reunited with a parent or relative in the U.S., and some are leaving parents and siblings behind. How to portray such a hard and harsh reality? Employing free verse, Argueta manages to evoke moments and feelings, softening the rough edges while remaining true to his subject. In poems that follow the harrowing journey, readers keep pace with the children who narrate. They describe their hometowns, the dangers of life in gang-dominated areas, their decisions to leave, border crossings and indecision over whether to turn back or go on, the inhospitable landscapes they traverse only to be met in the end by the border patrol, and, finally, safety in their mothers arms. Ruanos realistic artwork conveys an immediacy that complements and extends the poems, allowing readers not familiar with the experience to be able to see it. Poignant, heartbreaking, and, sadly, timely. (authors note) (Bilingual picture book/poetry. 8 up) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Unaccompanied minors from Central America have been making the dangerous trek to the U.S. in search of their family and a safer life, and this collection of bilingual poems centers around the experiences of these children. Middle-grade and older readers alike will be able to connect to Argueta's carefully crafted first-person stories of immigration. In the same manner, Ruano gives a beautiful brown face to the children forced to flee violence in their home country, through his acrylic paintings, which range from the surreal to the realistic. The poem iPod is an excellent example of the powerful manner in which the words, both in English and Spanish, and illustrations work together. iPod is the name of a young boy who leaves everything behind, including his precious MP3 player, to travel north. Argueta and Ruano present a unique and much-needed perspective on the reasons driving young people to immigrate to the U.S., in particular the desire to reunite with family. The scarcity of Latino children's and young-adult books that center on Central American experiences makes this poignant poetry collection extremely vital. Similar books include René Colato Laínez's Waiting for Papá / Esperando a Papá (2004).--Rodríguez, Sonia Alejandra Copyright 2016 Booklist
