The Firefly Letters: A Suffragette's Journey to Cuba by Margarita Engle (2017, Square Fish; 176 pages) “Your Majesty ... I can from Cuba, better than you from any other point on this side of the globe, speak of the New World, because Cuba lies between North and South America ... Heaven and earth, the people, language, laws, manners, style of building, every thing is new...”-- Frederika Bremer, in a letter to Carolina Amelia, Queen Dowager of Denmark, April, 1851 Matanzas, Cuba CECILIA “I remember a wide river and gray parrots with patches of red feathers flashing across the African sky like traveling stars or Cuban fireflies. In the silence of night I still hear my mother wailing, and I see my father's eyes refusing to meet mine. I was eight, plenty old enough to understand that my father was haggling with a wandering slave trader, agreeing to exchange me for a stolen cow. Spanish sea captains and Arab merchants are not the only men who think of girls as livestock.” This is the beginning of one of the most beautiful juvenile books I've read, a book written by Newbery Honor-Winning Author Margarita Engle, and a book with a fantastic title: The firefly Letters, a Suffragette's Journey to Cuba. Margarita Engle is a Cuban-American poet, novelist and journalist whose work has been published in many countries. When Fredrika Bremer asked the Swedish Consulate to find her a quiet home in the Cuban countryside, she expected a rustic one, instead of the luxurious mansion in Matanzas, where Elena, the daughter of the house, can barely step foot outside. The freedom to roam is something that woman and girls in Cuba didn't have. Fredrika is accompanied by Cecilia, a young slave who longs for her lost home in Africa. Elena, Fredrika and Cecilia will become friends and they will explore the lush countryside, forming a bond that breaks the barriers of language and culture. This extraordinary book brings the reader a portrait of early women's rights pioneer, Swedish writer Fredrika Bremer, and the journey to Cuba that transformed her life. As the author writes at the end of the book, nearly all the events described in the book are documented in Fredrika's letters and diaries, but the character of Elena is a fictional one. Cecilia's husband was mentioned but not named in Bremer's letters. She wrote that Cecilia was eight years old when she was taken to Cuba from Africa, and that she said she still missed her mother. The book is written in verse form, and each chapter is the voice of one of the three women characters. Margarita Engle's imagination and research brings us a mix of fiction and non-fiction that delivers a jewel that readers will love. Recommended to all, especially those who cherish curiosity and love history, strong women, and traveling to other countries. Find this title in our catalog: The Firefly Letters Recommended by: Maite
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Revolutionary Women: A Book Of Stencils by Queen of the Neighborhood (2010, PM Press; 128 pages) This is a gorgeous book of short biographies and striking stencil images of thirty women's heroes: activists, anarchists, feminists, freedom-fighters, and visionaries. The reader can find a well of inspiration from this celebration of surbversive portraits celebrating strong women from all over the world. From Harriet Tubman, Emma Goldman, and Angela Davis, to Vandana Shiva, Sylvia Rivera, and Lucia Sanchez Saornil. From Qiu Jin to Comandante Ramona or Malalai Joya, the book offers a complete radical way to bring history to the hands of readers. A sampling of quotes from key writings and speeches gives voice to each woman's ideologies, struggles, ideas, philosophies and humanity. The stencils are a jewel, a creative and powerful way to bring the likeness of these women into the book. Queen of the Neighborhood is an all-women collective of writers, researchers, editors, and graphic designers originally hailing from Aotearoa/New Zealand. They are Tui Gordon, Hoyden, Melissa Steiner, Anna Kelliher, Rachel Bell, Anna-Claire Hunter, and Janet McAllister. Taking seed from the original zine, Revolutionary Women Stencil Book, the collective sprouted up from fans and friends who spent the next two years distilling their feminist passion into that book. I'd recommend this book to readers who are looking for inspiration in strong women of our present and past, those looking for information of strong women from different parts of the globe, and those interested in the art of stencils. Find this title in our catalog: Revolutionary Women: A Book Of Stencils Recommended by: Maite Library of Luminaries: Virginia Woolf: An Illustrated Biography by Zena Alkayat and Nina Cosford (2016, Chronicle) Imagine a short but complete biography of one of the twentieth century's greatest writers and creative thinkers, Virginia Woolf, a book filled with beautiful watercolors illustrating the handwritten words that celebrate her life. This is that book, an extraordinary beautiful piece of art and literature that we can enjoy thanks to Chronicle Books. The book belongs to the Library of Luminaries series, a collection of books about luminaries in history in relatively short but always beautifully illustrated volumes offered in an appealing, medium-sized square hardback format that brings a different point of view to the book. You won't find dense text in it, but you will be able to take your time to delight in information about Virginia's family tree, for example, quotes from her letters and diaries, or information about her group of friends, the Bloomsbury group she helped form. The illustrated biography also features little details like her nickname for her husband, or about how slowly her first novel sold, information about what she kept on her desk, and portions of the note she left her husband before she ended her own life. This book is a treasure for everyone, and especially for those who love Virginia Woolf, biographies, woman’s history and beautiful watercolors. Read it! Find this title in our catalog: This book is being catalogued Recommended by: Maite Olga And The Smelly Thing From Nowhere by Elise Gravel (2017, HarperCollins; 176 pages) This advance copy got in my hands a few weeks ago and as soon as I opened the book I fell in love with Olga. Olga adores animals, and doesn't adore people so much. She loves to take notes on life around her, and she is going to give the reader the opportunity to peer into her “observation notebook.” She will introduce us to Rita, her best friend, a spider who lives under the bathroom sink, and she will share with us why her arch enemies are two neighbors named Farla and Shalala whose lives are very different from hers. As a matter of fact, Olga's life will change her usual routines when she discovers an odd, smelly creature that looks “like a cross between an inflated hamster and a potato drawn by a three-year-old.” She, of course, adopts the creature, a creature whose only word is “meh,” and that's how she will be named. From that point on, Olga gets her scientist-in-training mindset on and starts with writing down daily observations about “the thing.” Meh is scared of bananas, and Olga can't figure it out what she likes to eat...The adventures begin. This is a fantastic chapter book on a cartooning shape, with lots of red and white and black in it. Readers 8 to 12 and adults like myself will roar with laughter at Olga and Meh's adventures, and probably will understand Olga's misanthropic humor, and cherish the fact that her attitude and thoughts about human beings softens by the end of the book. A treasure, read it. Find this title in our catalog: This book has not yet been released Recommended by: Maite Two White Rabbits by Jairo Buitrago and Rafael Yockteng (illustrator) (2015, Groundwood Books; 32 pages) A little girl is traveling with her father, and she doesn’t know where they are going. She entertains herself counting the animals by the road, the stars and clouds in the sky. Along the way, sometimes she sees soldiers, and there are scary times when they are forced to stop because her father needs to earn more money before they can continue their journey. She also meets a friend who gives her a beautiful present. This is an extraordinary story with incredibly powerful and realistic illustrations that recreate the story of one of the many thousands of migrants that travel north from Central America and Mexico to reach the U.S. border. The book is powerful and a fantastic example of the power of showing a reality, rather than telling it. We don’t really know why the father and daughter in the book are leaving their home and the world they love and know to go to a different country. We can try to guess, but we are not told. We do know about the millions of people around the world becoming refugees every year. The book offers a little bit of information about this reality at the end of the story, information brought by Patricia Aldana, President of the IBBY Foundation. In North America, close to a hundred thousand children from Central America have made the very dangerous trip the story tells to try to find safety and a way to survive in the United States. Coyotes, people whom they pay to “help” them make the trip, often betray and abandon them. And when they finally make it to the border, they might be turned back or arrested. Aldana leaves us with a question: “What do those of us who have safe comfortable lives owe to people who do not?” Jairo Buitrago and Rafael Yockteng bring us a fantastic book about refugees and/or migrants. Recommended for all ages. Find this title in our catalog: Two White Rabbits Recommended by: Maite Fatty Legs by Christy Jordan-Fenton and Margaret Pokiak-Fenton (2010, Annick Press; 112 pages) Olemaun Pokiak is an Inuit girl living on a remote island in the Artic Ocean, who begs her dad to let her move far away from her village, so that she can attend the outsider’s school, a Catholic school. Her dad finally allows her to go, but before she does, he warns her: “as water wears rock smooth, your spirit will be worn down and made small.” Renamed Margaret Pokiak, she will soon encounter Raven, one of the nuns who immediately will dislike the girl. Raven forces her to wear a pair of red stockings that make her legs look fatty, becoming “fatty legs” for her classmates, and that’s the beginning of a bullying pattern that she will overcome because she decides to put an end to it. This is the story of a secret that the author kept for more of 60 years: the secret of how she made those stockings disappear. Beautiful written, the book also contains gorgeous drawings by Liz Amini-Holmes and delightful and very interesting pictures belonging to Olemaun’s (Margaret) scrapbook. Excellent reading about forced native assimilation. Best for youth 11 and older. Find this title in our catalog: Fatty Legs Recommended by: Maite A Game For Swallows: To Die, To Leave, To Return by Zeina Abirached (Graphic Universe, 2012; 192 pages) We Need Diverse Books™ is a grassroots organization of children’s book lovers that advocates essential changes in the publishing industry to produce and promote literature that reflects and honors the lives of all young people. The We Need Diverse Books movement was spearheaded by author Ellen Oh and a group of 21 other children’s book writers and industry professionals in response to the announcement of an all-white, all-male panel of children’s book authors at a major book and publishing convention. What began as a social media awareness campaign quickly grew into a global movement that demanded the attention of the publishing industry, the media, and readers everywhere. I am a firm believer in this initiative and as a result I am making efforts to be more aware of reaching out to diverse books in my own reading time. The book A Game for Swallows. To Die, To Leave, To Return is a book written by Zeina Abirached, who was born in Beirut in 1981 in the middle of a civil war. She was ten when the war ended. She studied graphic arts and commercial design at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts, and in 2002 was awarded the top prize at the International Comic Book Festival in Beirut for her first graphic novel, Beyrouth-Catharsis. Some years later, while surfing online, she came across a television documentary made in Beirut in 1984. The reporters were interviewing the residents of a street near the demarcation line that cut the city in two. A woman whose home had been hit by the bombing spoke a single sentence that startled her: "You know, I think maybe we're still more or less safe here." That woman was her grandmother and Zeina Abirached knew she had to tell the story of their lives in Beirut. She did and she created this graphic novel with tight drawings that sharpen every detail, and every detail here matters. This is a beautiful remembrance in black and white, and a moving tale of the life of an ordinary family living in Beirut in extraordinary times. Readers who enjoyed Marjare Satrapi's Persepolis will dive into this book and learn a lot. Find this title in our catalog: A Game For Swallows Recommended by: Maite Jane, The Fox & Me by Fanny Britt and Isabelle Arsenault (2013, Groundwood Books; 104 pages) Fanny Britt is a Quebec playwright, author and translator who has written a dozen plays and translated more than fifteen others. In this book, she travels in the company of Isabelle Arsenault, a Quebec illustrator who has won an impressive number of awards and has achieved international recognition. This book is a visually stunning graphic novel and an emotionally honest juvenile novel, both at once. This is the story of Helene, who has been shunned by the girls who were once her friends. Her school life is full of whispers and lies, but fortunately Helene finds one consolation, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. Helene identifies strongly with Jane's trials, and when she is lost in the pages of her wonderful book, she is able to ignore her tormentors. But when Helene is humiliated on a school trip in front of her entire class, she needs more than a fictional character to see herself as a person deserving of laughter and friendship. The author is not shy in showing the brutality of which children are capable, but she is also hopeful and brings the reader a fact: redemption can be found through connecting with another, whether the other is a friend, a fictional character, or even, amazingly, a fox. Recommended for free spirits, animal lovers, classic lovers, beautiful illustrations and those looking for answers about bullying. Find this title in our catalog: Jane, The Fox & Me Recommended by: Maite Animalium: Welcome to the Museum by Katie Scott and Jenny Broom (2014, Big Picture Press; 112 pages) This book is a museum open all hours of the day and night. It presents the animal kingdom in glorious detail with astonishing illustrations by Katie Scott. This is a series of books set on the “walls" of the printed page, and it showcases the world’s finest collections of objects form natural history to art. When you open this book you start a walk through a museum that hosts a collection of more than 160 animals for visitors of all ages. You can learn how animals have evolved, see inside the dissection laboratory and discover the amazing variety of habitats on Earth. Absolutely recommended for animal and art lovers, this books offers a change to explore the animal kingdom in all its glory. Find this title in our catalog: Animalium Recommended by: Maite Symphony For The City Of The Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad by M. T. Anderson (2015, Candlewick; 464 pages) Winner of the National Book Award M. T. Anderson delivers in this great book a riveting account of the Siege of Leningrad and the role played in WWII by Russian composer Shostakovich and his Leningrad Symphony. This is a true story, the story of a city under siege. It is also a look at the power of music in difficult times. Trapped between the Nazi invading force and the Soviet government itself, composer Dmitri Shostakovich wrote a symphony that roused, rallied, eulogized, and commemorated his fellow citizens -- the Leningrad Symphony. This testament of courage was copied onto microfilm, driven across the Middle East, and flown across the deserts of North Africa to be performed in the United States, where it played a surprising role in strengthening the Grand Alliance against the Axis powers. The book is a masterwork, impeccably written and researched by author M. T. Anderson. The source notes are fascinating, and the book includes pictures of events and characters. A not-to-be-missed j non-fiction book. Find this title in our catalog: Symphony For The City Of The Dead Recommended by: Maite |