Skip to main content

Isla to Island

By

 

Isla to Island
By Alexis Castellanos
Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2022. Graphic Novel.

In this mostly wordless picture book based on true events, a young girl named Marisol lives with her parents in Cuba during the early 60s.  Marisol's life is colorful, happy, and filled with the books she so loves.  Sadly, Marisol's family's happiness is threatened when Fidel Castro comes into power and Cuba is in unrest.  Marisol's parents, fearing for Marisol's safety, send her to New York to live and hopefully be safe until they can be reunited.  New York is so different from Cuba--here everything seems lonely, drab, and grey, and although the older couple who take Marisol in are kind, Marisol can't understand them.  School is even worse.  There she's bullied, lonely, and confused.  Only when she discovered the library at school does color start to come back into her life.  

This book proves that you don't need dialogue and lots of verbal imagery or background to learn to love characters and become fully invested in their story.  Marisol was so loveable and relatable.  The stark contrast between the colorful images of her life in Cuba with her parents and the colorless imagery once she makes it to New York really portray how alone and sad Marisol feels being away from home and family.  I loved Marisol's connection to books and how discovering them in New York made her feel more at home there.  A wonderful story that builds empathy towards the immigrant experience and helps the reader walk in someone else's shoes. Highly recommend.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Funny Farm by Mark Teague 2009

By Anonymous
There are things I liked about Mark Teague's newest book, Funny Farm , and things I didn't like. Where should I start? I'll do the "didn'ts" first. The illustrations show animals personified. Well, some of the animals are. The main characters, Edward, and his farm family relatives, all dogs, are humanized. They stand upright, do farm chores, eat at a table, wear clothes, knit (yes, with paws) and sleep in beds. Most everybody else on and around the farm, who are also animals, act like animals. They are outside, roll in mud, live in the barn, and require care from their owners. It struck me the most on the page spread where there are pigs playing in puddle in the rain and Edward, a black and white boxer, watches from inside the house. I thought "You're a dog! Go play with them!" But, alas, he can't, seeing as how he goes through his entire visit to the farm wearing a suit and red bow tie. Another picture that bothered me was the maple syrup pa...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Girl Who Could Fly by Victoria Forester 2008

By Anonymous
J Fiction 328 pages I almost didn't finish this book. I got to Chapter 4, and was just about ready to quit (a kind of slow story about a girl, name of Piper McCloud, who discovers she can fly, parents freak out, she becomes a social outcast, yadda, yadda) but suddenly, right there in Chapter 4, the story takes a sharp turn and becomes really interesting . Piper finds herself in the company of others like her, but not "fliers", and under the care and authority of Dr. Hellion. I won't even tell you any more. Read this book. Forester does a great job of keeping you wondering who's the good guy and who's the bad? Piper is a likeable, strong, endearing character that girl readers will enjoy. But don't NOT give it to boys! The main male character is an extremely intelligent young man who is one of the ones you wonder about . . . good or bad? This is a good one, well worth your time.
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: The Factory

By
The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...
Post a Comment
Read more