STBA Blog Tour: Margarita Engle, Tropical Secrets

 

Welcome to the 2010 Sydney Taylor Book Award Blog Tour!  I'm honored to be hosting Margarita Engle, author of Tropical Secrets:  Holocaust Refugees in Cuba (Henry Holt, 2009), at bookstogether today.  Tropical Secrets is this year's STBA winner in the Teen Readers category.

Anamaria Anderson (AA):  Congratulations and welcome to bookstogether, Margarita!

Margarita Engle (ME):  Thank you.  I am so deeply honored by the Sydney Taylor Award, and I am so grateful for this opportunity to speak about Tropical Secrets. 

AA:  Tropical Secrets is such an evocative title.  Would you share some of the secrets to which it refers (without, of course, giving any of them away)?

ME:  I feel very close to this title.  It springs from my own sense of wonder about the story.  There is a feeling of discovery.  I am fascinated by the safe harbor Jewish refugees found in Cuba, and in other Latin American countries as well.  I am particularly intrigued by the Cuban teenagers who volunteered to teach Spanish to the refugees.

AA:  How did you go about the research for this story?

ME:  I found the factual details in an amazing scholarly study called Tropical Diaspora, by Robert M. Levine.  Without the nonfiction accounts in that reference, I could not have written Tropical Secrets.  I am astonished that the history of Holocaust refugees in Cuba, and in Latin America as a whole, is not more familiar. 

AA:  I agree, Margarita.  The fictional characters of Tropical Secrets—Daniel, Paloma, David, and el Gordo—bring these unfamiliar historical events to life for your readers.  When did your characters, and their personal stories, begin to reveal themselves to you?

ME:  The characters and plot of Tropical Secrets came to me in a huge wave.  It was overwhelming.  I could barely scribble fast enough to keep up with the flow of words.  It was as if this story had been waiting to be told, and was searching for a home.

My mother is Cuban, and was raised Catholic.  My father is the American son of Ukrainian-Jewish refugees.  Tropical Secrets unites the diverse branches of my ancestry.

AA:  I think it found the perfect home.  What would you like your readers to take home from Tropical Secrets?

ME:  I wrote Tropical Secrets because I admire the resilience of refugees, and the generosity of those who help them.  This is a facet of Tropical Secrets that transcends all borders and eras.  It is true of natural disasters as well as manmade ones.  I simply wanted to pay homage to the idea of safe harbors and the kindness of strangers.

AA:  That facet of Tropical Secrets resonates especially clearly right now, in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti; and it is always worth remembering.

Thank you so much, Margarita, for these insights into your work, and congratulations again.  I look forward to your forthcoming books (The Firefly Letters and Summer Birds:  The Butterflies of Maria Merian, both 2010) and wish you all the best.

And thank all of you for stopping by the STBA Blog Tour!  Please be sure to visit the other stops on the tour today and later this week; and of course I hope you'll visit me at bookstogether anytime.

What about the Belpre?

Oh--what is the Belpre, you ask?  The Pura Belpre Award goes "to a Latino/Latina writer and illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth." Like the Newbery and Caldecott, the Belpre is awarded by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of ALA; and by REFORMA, an ALA affiliate.  When?  Tomorrow!

Tropical Secrets by Margarita Engle (Henry Holt) and Confetti Girl by Diana Lopez (Little, Brown), are (as you might guess by their covers) representative of the range of Latino cultural experience recognized by the Belpre.  Tropical Secrets is a haunting verse novel about Holocaust refugees in Cuba; Confetti Girl is a more typical middle grade novel, with familiar middle grade concerns, set in the predominantly Latino community of Corpus Christi, TX.  I hope they are both recognized tomorrow.

I think about the Newbery all year (watch for my annual Newbery predictions post to go up sometime before midnight tonight), but I had to scramble to read more than a handful of candidates for the Belpre in time for the ceremony.  This year I resolve (it's not too late!) to read more books by Latino/Latina authors.  And I also hope you'll join me.

Mockingbird in the Furnace

My friend Madelyn Rosenberg is launching her new blog, The Furnace, with an interview with Kathryn Erskine, author of Mockingbird (forthcoming from Philomel, April 2010).  It's an excellent interview, covering everything from Asperger's Syndrome to the April 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech to the themes of tolerance, understanding, and finally hope that are common to all of Erskine's work.

Mockingbird's 10-year-old narrator Caitlin has Asperger's, as does Erskine's daughter.  I think there are more and more middle grade and YA novels with characters on the autism spectrum lately, many of them inspired by personal experience.  Here are the ones I've read recently:

• Rules by Cynthia Lord (a Newbery Honor book told from the perspective of an older sibling)
• Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree and Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell in Love by Lauren Tarshis
• The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd
• Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork (a potential Printz winner)

Some of these, including Mockingbird, are featured in The Voices of Autism by Suzanne Crowley (SLJ, 8/1/2009), a look at recent books about autism and the people who write them.  Have you read any of them?  If so, did you read them because they're in some way about autism, or would you have read them anyway?

Operation Yes

Congratulations to Sara Lewis Holmes, whose middle grade novel Operation Yes (Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine) is one of Booklist's Top Ten Arts Books for Youth.  For local folk, Sara will be talking about and signing copies of Operation Yes at Hooray For Books! in Old Town Alexandria from 1-3 tomorrow (that's Sunday, November 8).

And from Booklist's list (November 1, 2009):  Miss Loupe, a new teacher at a school on a North Carolina military base, wins over her sixth-grade class with improv theater techniques in this heartfelt story about the power of theatrical collaboration and creativity to inspire and heal.

So should you read this book?  Yes!

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

Sometimes I wish that girls in books who were interested in science could also happen to like needlework.  Calpurnia Tate doesn't, but I've read so many great reviews of Jacqueline Kelly's The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate (Henry Holt, 2009) that I'm willing to let it go.  Maybe a girl living in Texas in 1899 didn't have the luxury of liking both and would have had to commit to one or the other?  Also, look at that glorious cover (it's by Beth White, who also did the cover for The Monsters of Templeton).  Anyway, Amanda at A Patchwork of Books has three copies of Calpurnia to give away:  maybe one of them will be mine.  Or yours!  Or...mine.

The Hidden Adult in Henry Huggins

The CCBC-Net discussion topic for the second two weeks of July is Perry Nodelman's newest book, The Hidden Adult: Defining Children's Literature (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008). Coincidentally, I just read Henry Huggins (one of the six children's books under consideration in The Hidden Adult) aloud to the kids, both of whom enjoyed it immensely; in fact, they're clamoring for me to read the next book in the series (Henry and Beezus) as I type.  I was reminded of how much I loved Beverly Cleary books, which were easily identifiable in their Yearling editions by the author's name in red bubble letters above the title, and of how well they've held up:  Henry Huggins was first published in 1950; I read it in the late 70s, and my kids are reading it another 30 years later.  I'm looking for a copy of The Hidden Adult so I can participate in the discussion.

Aside:  I actively dislike one of the other five books (The Purple Jar, Alice in Wonderland, Dr. Doolittle, The Snowy Day, and Plain City) Nodelman analyzes in The Hidden Adult.  Guess which one? 

School's out, or A scary magical adventure

Our last-day-of-school tradition involves a trip to the bookstore to sign up for the summer reading program (we signed up for the one at the public library already) and pick out a brand new book. This year Leo, who has always liked realistic fiction (think Andrew Clements), surprised me by wanting what he described as "scary magical adventure books." Scary? That didn't sound like Leo. It did, however, sound like some of his friends. Fortunately there were a lot of scary (but maybe not too scary) magical adventure books to choose from, and in no time he had acquired a tall stack and was inspecting them before deciding which one to buy. He decided on 100 Cupboards by N.D. Wilson, on the strength (I think) of its gorgeous green cover. He hasn't read it yet.

I wanted to show you a picture of the stack of books in question (so shiny!), but a bookseller politely informed me that photography was prohibited in the store. Company policy. To keep customers from buying the books online or checking them out of the library, maybe? I was mortified, apologetic, defensive, and finally understanding, if also unconvinced. Anyway, before I photograph the stack of scary magical adventure books we did check out of the library (ahem), please let me know what you would recommend in that genre, for an almost-9-year-old boy going on his very first one.

[Updated to add: Charlotte is looking for 70s-era fantasy books for a nine-year-old girl today.  I am partial to the 70s myself, having done some growing-up during them; and I think fantasy books cross over gender (and time) well.  Check out her recommendations!]

Millicent and Stanford (and Emily, too)

I'm reading two middle-grade novels by Lisa Yee right now:  Millicent Min, Girl Genius (Arthur A. Levine, 2003) is my upstairs book and Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time (Arthur A. Levine, 2005) is my downstairs book.  Reading them together makes sense given that they tell the same story from two different points of view.  I'm a little surprised to find myself enjoying Stanford's book more than Millie's, but that could be because I identify too strongly with her (not necessarily the girl genius part, but maybe the uptight ultra-geeky part); it makes me uncomfortable.  Stanford is just hilarious.  So that's what middle school-aged boys are thinking.  Good to know!

I also just discovered that if I had another floor in my house I could be reading So Totally Emily Ebers (Arthur A. Levine, 2007), too.  See Lisa Yee's website for sample chapters of Millicent Min and Stanford Wong as well as a sneak peek at Emily.

Baseball, gratis

We went to a Nationals game yesterday afternoon, our first game at Nats Park (thank you to Angie, my generous neighbor and loyal reader, for the tickets!). The Nats won! They always do when Leo goes to the game; it's been five games now, and counting.  I hope we make it to a few more this summer; the Nats could use his help.  And Milly likes to run the bases after the game.

Even though we didn't have to pay for our tickets (thanks again, Angie! We had a great time), this wasn't free baseball. That's a term for "a game that gives fans more than they technically paid for--extra innings or the second game of a doubleheader," as defined by Sue Corbett in her middle grade novel Free Baseball (Dutton, 2006).  I checked this book out of the library for Leo and I to read together because it's about baseball (obviously), and because the main character, eleven-year-old Little League player Felix Piloto, is Cuban-American (so am I).  I was hoping it would give us more than we technically paid for--more, that is, than just baseball.  And it does; it's a fine novel about Felix's search for the truth about his father, a famous baseball player in Cuba, that also deals with the immigrant experience in general and the situation in Cuba in particular (where nothing, including baseball, is free).  It was well-reviewed by Jen Robinson and Camille at BookMoot.

N.b., I was bothered by the mistakes in the Spanish words and phrases that appear in the book and its glossary.  Some mistakes were idiomatic, others grammatical.  In a few cases the constructions were just too formal.  But each time I came across one, I lost confidence in the story and in Corbett's otherwise sensitive telling of it.  It's true that most readers won't know Spanish, let alone the Cuban dialect, but I don't think that's an excuse for getting it wrong.  Free Baseball deserves better.

Next up:  Mike Lupica's Heat.  Baseball book recommendations most welcome!

The Mysterious Benedict Society

I just finished The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart (Little Brown, 2007; check out the book's website here).  It took a lot longer than it should have--I kept leaving it upstairs where the children were sleeping, or downstairs after I went to bed myself, and at one point I had to return it to the library (it was overdue) and check out another copy.  Maybe I just didn't want it to end.  I love puzzle-mysteries, and this one has a great cast of characters, too.  Here are the four gifted children who form the society, working on an assignment:

The children--all except Constance, who was too busy humphing--set to their notes.  Sticky read so quickly that he seemed hardly to have started before he'd finished.  He sat quietly, deep in thought, waiting for the others.  Ten minutes later, Reynie had finished, too, and Kate, noting this, set aside her last few pages and asked the boys to fill her in (132).

Look at how Stewart identifies each of those characters in that one paragraph.  My favorite of the four has to be the diminutive Constance Contraire.  She felt familiar right away, although I didn't realize why until the end of the book [no spoilers here].  Here's a description of Constance:

Constance's face turned so red, her pale blue eyes glistened so brightly behind angry tears, and her wispy blond hair was in such a state of dishevelment that she looked more like a small child's painting of a person than an actual person herself (227).

I also love the ink and wash illustrations by Carson Ellis (on the cover, and at the beginning of each chapter).  The second MBS book (The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey) will be out in May, with illustrations by Diana Sudyka.  Can't wait.  I wonder if Trenton Stewart Ellis is a fan of the Decemberists?

Aesop Elementary

The Fabled Fourth Graders of Aesop Elementary by Candace Fleming (Shwartz and Wade, 2007) was a Washington Post KidsPost Book of the Week way back in October (the winning entries in the KidsPost fable-writing contest were printed in today's paper).  While I think everyone should know (if not love) the originals, I really like the idea of recasting Aesop's animal fables with kids, and retelling (or completely rewriting) the fables in an elementary school context.  Each of the fourth-graders in Fleming's book gets his or her own short school-themed chapter or "fable", complete with moral; there is also a romantic subplot involving the fourth-grade teacher and the school librarian that runs the course of the school year.  Warning:  the book itself is very punny!

This article by Judy Freeman in School Library Journal online (Curriculum Connections, 11/8/2007) has lots of good suggestions for teaching with The Fabled Fourth Graders.  First among them is reading the classic fable along with the corresponding chapter of the book (compare and contrast!).  If you're so inclined, or if you're just interested in reading Aesop's fables, these are my two favorite picture book editions:

• The McElderry Book of Aesop's Fables by Michael Morpurgo; illustrated by Emma Chichester Clark (McElderry, 2005).  Also my kids' favorite.
• Unwitting Wisdom:  An Anthology of Aesop's Fables retold and illustrated by Helen Ward (Chronicle, 2004).  More sophisticated retellings.

Mr. Fox really is Fantastic

Many thanks to Susan T. at Chicken Spaghetti for her Poetry Friday post featuring a "jaunty little song" from Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox.  Leo and I started Fox last night and finished it this afternoon almost as soon as he got home from school.  It was great fun to read aloud, and perfect for us to read together (I had to resist the temptation to read ahead after Leo went to bed).  I also had to reassure Leo that the Fox family would be fine in the end more than once (I guessed; thank goodness I was correct!).

To be fair, farmers Boggis, Bunce, and Bean pose a credible threat to the foxes, and the book is fairly explicit about what might happen to them ("How will they kill us, Mummy?" asked one of the Small Foxes.  His round black eyes were huge with fright.  "Will there be dogs?").  In spite of (or perhaps because of?) that, Leo and I were compelled to keep reading, at breakneck pace, until we had reached the very happy, for the foxes at least, end.

At dinner (from Boggis's Chicken House Number One, natch), we talked about when and whether it was right for Mr. Fox to steal from the farmers.  I like that Dahl deals with this dilemma in the book itself (see Chapter 14, Badger Has Doubts), although he leaves a lot of room for discussion.  A good kids' book club pick!

[By the way, have you heard that there is a Fantastic Mr. Fox movie due out next year?  George Clooney is the voice of Mr. Fox.  No, really!]