Americas

Materials from the Americas

Into the Labyrinth

What a relief when the old story-book is republished and the characters who live inside it suddenly discover they have Readers again — lots of Readers! Princess Sylvie finds herself rushing to get to her place whenever a new Reader — whether in Boston or Bangkok — opens the book. Her mother, the queen, is especially frazzled when the popular story is loaded onto the Web, a weightless, “virtual” world of unforeseen challenges. To cope with the stress, Sylvie convinces the Writer to add a new character, who gives yoga instruction to the storybook’s cast in those moments when they have time off. But stress proves the least of their problems as strange things start happening — words get changed around, scenes disappear — and Sylvie and her friends must launch themselves into the labyrinth of cyberspace to confront a twenty-first-century evil that threatens to destroy their world.

The Great Good Thing

“Rawwwwk! Reader!” screams an orange bird. “Booook open!” groans a frog. Then the sky lifts away and the enormous face of a child peers down into Sylvie’s storybook world. At last, a reader again! Sylvie has been a twelve-year-old princess for more than eighty years, ever since the book she lives in was first printed. She’s the heroine, and her story is exciting — but it’s always exciting in the same way. That’s the trouble. Sylvie has a restless urge to explore, to accomplish a Great Good Thing beyond the margins of her book. This time, when the new face appears, Sylvie breaks the rule of all storybook characters: Never look at the Reader. Worse, she gets to know the reader, a shy young girl named Claire, and when Claire falls asleep with the book open, Sylvie enters her dreams. After a fire threatens her kingdom, Sylvie rescues the other characters, taking them across the sea in an invisible fish that rolls up like a window shade when it’s out of water. For years they all live, royalty and rogues, in Claire’s subconscious — a surprising and sometimes perilous place. In this new land, Sylvie achieves many Good Things, but the Greatest, like this dazzling book, goes far and deep, beyond even her imaginings.

Streets of Gold

Based on a memoir written in the early twentieth century, tells the story of a young girl and her life in Russia, her travels to America, and her subsequent life in the United States.

Armando and the Blue Tarp School

Armando and his father are trash-pickers in Tijuana, Mexico, but when Senor David brings his “school”–a blue tarp set down near the garbage dump–to their neighborhood, Armando’s father decides that he must attend classes and learn. Based on a true story.

Under The Lemon Moon

The theft of all the lemons from her lemon tree leads Rosalinda to an encounter with la Anciana, the Old One, who walks the Mexican countryside helping things grow, and to an understanding of generosity and forgiveness.