Caribbean

Jimmy The Greatest!

Jimmy lives in a small Caribbean town where there’s not a whole lot to do. Fortunately though, there is a boxing gym, and one day the owner, Don Apolinar, suggests that Jimmy start training. He also gives Jimmy a cardboard box full of books and newspaper clippings all about Muhammad Ali. Jimmy reads and re-reads as he never has before. He is swept with admiration for Ali who said, “I am the greatest. I said that even before I knew I was.” He starts to feel good, realizing that he doesn’t need to have a lot of fancy stuff, that he’s a pretty good boxer himself, and that he can look forward to the future. But by the time Don Apolinar has to leave for the big city, Jimmy realizes that he can have a great life running the gym, creating a library, dancing and boxing . . . right where he is.Jairo Buitrago’s simple yet inspiring story is complemented by Rafael Yockteng’s funny, expressive illustrations, making this a book that will speak to many young readers.The Spanish edition, ¡Jimmy, el más grande!, was recently named one of “Los mejores libros del año” (Best Books of the Year) by Venezuela’s Banco del Libro.

Guantanamo Boy

Six months after the events of September 11, 2001, Khalid, a Muslim fifteen-year-old boy from England, is kidnapped during a family trip to Pakistan and imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he is held for two years suffering interrogations, water-boarding, isolation, and more for reasons unknown to him.

Featured in WOW Review Volume IX, Issue 2.

Good-Bye, Havana! Hola, New York!

When five year old Gabriella hears talk of Castro and something called revolution in her home in Cuba, she doesn’t understand. Then when her parents leave suddenly and she remains with her grandparents, life isn’t the same. Soon the day comes when she goes to live with her parents in a new place called the Bronx. It isn’t warm like Havana, and there is traffic not the ocean outside her window. Their life is different- it snows in the winter and the food at school is hot dogs and macaroni. What will it take for the Bronx to feel like home?

Birthday Suit

birthdayJohnny loves nothing better than splashing in the ocean waves—naked. But Mom says now that he’s four he’s too old to run around without clothes on. She even buys him a pair of overalls with genuine 100 percent child-proof snap fasteners! But they’re no match for Johnny as he wriggles out of them. Johnny’s father explains that big boys wear clothes. Doesn’t he want to be big like Dad? As Johnny gazes up, he decides that wearing clothes may be a small price to pay to reach such heights. Everyone is happy as Johnny practices putting on his clothes. And now when he runs into the ocean, he makes sure to take his red swimsuit—but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll always wear it! Imbued with the lilt of the Caribbean and featuring illustrations that capture the warmth and humor of the text, this charming picture book is sure to amuse young children—naked or not!

The Wild Book

Fefa struggles with words. She has word blindness, or dyslexia, and the doctor says she will never read or write. Every time she tries, the letters jumble and spill off the page, leaping and hopping away like bullfrogs. How will she ever understand them? But her mother has an idea. She gives Fefa a blank book filled with clean white pages. “Think of it as a garden,” she says. Soon Fefa starts to sprinkle words across the pages of her wild book. She lets her words sprout like seedlings, shaky at first, then growing stronger and surer with each new day. And when her family is threatened, it is what Fefa has learned from her wild book that saves them.

See the review at WOW Review, Volume 4, Issue 3

Painted Dreams

Because her Haitian family is too poor to be able to buy paints for her, eight-year-old Ti Marie finds her own way to create pictures that make the heart sing. Ti Marie dreams of being an artist. Whenever she gets some time away from watching her little sisters and helping Mama in their market stall, she finds a cement wall or a scrap of waste paper and lets her imagination soar. Using whatever she can find to make a mark–bits of red brick, charcoal, white rocks–Ti Marie makes beautiful art. If only she had real paint, brushes, and clean white canvas, what wonderful pictures she could paint then! But Mama says there is no money for such things. Still, Ti Marie finds a surprising way to make her dreams come true.