Ruby Lu, Empress of Everything

Ruby Lu, Empress of Everything
Author: Lenore Look
Illustrator: Anne Wilsdorf
Publisher: Atheneum/Anne Schwartz Books
ISBN-10: 0689864604
ISBN-13: 978-0689864605


In this utterly charming sequel to Ruby Lu, Brave and True, Ruby’s life gets really exciting. Ruby’s cousin Flying Duck has just arrived from China with her parents and not only is Ruby’s family speaking Chinese in the home for the benefit of the new immigrants, but Flying Duck is deaf and Ruby is learning Chinese Sign Language. Ruby achieves her dream of becoming a Smile Buddy in her second grade class room and she gets to take Flying Duck around and help her with her homework.

There are challenges too. Ruby’s not learning Chinese Sign Language as fast as she’d like. The language in the house has switched from English to Chinese and everyone uses chopsticks all the time now. Ruby’s sometimes best friend Emma is angry with her and then there’s the challenge of the summer swimming pool and swimming lessons.

The book is peppy, fast-paced, upbeat and fun. No special allowances are made for Flying Duck because she’s deaf. It’s just dealt with in a matter of fact and casual way. One of Ruby’s duties in school is to inform people that being deaf isn’t a handicap, Flying Duck is completely normal – she just can’t hear. Ruby Lu also gets to join Flying Duck in summer school where she can now learn ASL or American Sign Language right along with her cousin. The story deals with big time issues of immigration, families living together, unemployment, language barriers and acclimation to a new culture and country with a happy and normal tone. I loved it.

The fun little illustrations scattered throughout the book’s pages are equally fun and wonderful. They give a great sense of Ruby and her friend’s life. Ruby Lu, Empress of Everything is highly recommended for children just beginning chapter books.

The Guardians: A Novel

The Guardians: A Novel
Author: Ana Castillo
Publisher: Random House
ISBN-10: 1400065003
ISBN-13: 978-1400065004

Ana Castillo is one of those writers that I always expect not just the best of, but the best of the best of. She certainly doesn’t disappoint in her lyrical new book The Guardians.

The book tells the story in four intersecting voices of the main protagonists. 50-something redheaded virgin widow Regina who is eking out a poor living on her desert land while working as an underpaid teacher’s aide and caring for her nephew is one of the voices. She’s a strong character and embodies self sufficiency, love and the desire to get ahead.

Regina’s raising Gabo, a deeply troubled and religious young man. His mother was murdered seven years before in a border crossing and her body mutilated for its organs. Now his father Rafa is missing and Regina begins a search. The search leads her to Miguel or Mike, a divorced teacher at the school where Regina works. Miguel becomes a friend to them both and helps Regina in the search for her brother.

These three and an unlikely fourth, Miguel’s grandfather Abuelo Milton form a strange band of searchers as they hunt for clues to Rafa’s disappearance. Each chapter is written in one of these fours voices and gives depth and an interesting spin to the story. We see the intersection and the different views of the people who are living it.

"I don't think they could come up with a horror movie worse than the situation we got going on en la frontera," as Abuelo Milton says.

Throughout the book is the story of desperation, the illegal crossings, the coyotes who take advantage of the people they bring across. Castillo weaves into this intricately elegant story the Juarez murders of women, the Minutemen, the politics and the desert border town. It’s an amazing feat. She compels with each word, breathes magic into her words and we’re there, in a border meth lab where border crossers are held hostage until their families can come up with the money to ransom them. We feel the desperation of crossing the desert, the thirst that kills, the desire to make it through, to come to a better life. The book stands as a political statement about immigration, the rights of women and I think most of all it is a cry of outrage.

First Crossing: Stories About Teen Immigrants

First Crossing: Stories About Teen Immigrants
Editor: Donald R. Gallo
Publisher: Candlewick Press
ISBN-10: 0763632910
ISBN-13: 978-0763632915

Recommended for grades 7-10

Wow! Eleven well known authors write about the immigrant experience for teenagers. The stories are as different as the countries each immigrant comes from and completely absorbing. There are stories from Cambodia, Korea, Romania, Mexico, Venezuela among others.

Pam Muñoz Ryan's First Crossing tells the story of a young teen boy from Jalisco’s first trip across the border in Tijuana. It’s so heartbreaking. The story tells of the coyotes, how much people pay for the crossing and the dangers involved in doing so. It made me cry.

I loved David Lubar’s story of a Romanian boy that gets sent to Alaska rather than Arkansas with his family as they’ve been told. When his new school friends find out he is from Transylvania, they find new ways of testing him for vampiric abilities. It’s funny, quirky and different.

In My Favorite Chaperone, a girl from Kazakhstan describes the differences in culture and learns to fit in. This one was one of my favorites, especially when she is translating for her parents about her little brother and changes the translation to minimize the trouble her little brother gets into.

I think this is an important book for both the YA crowd as well as adults. The stories promote tolerance, explain the immigrant experience and really do a good job explaining all the very real reasons why people come here.

Rain of Gold by Victor Villasenor

The first time I read Rain of Gold, I thought to myself, “My God this is my family!” Victor Villasenor has the ability to draw in the reader and make he or she feel that they are living the story. This is particularly true in Rain of Gold.

The book follows two people and their families very different journeys through the hard times of the Mexican Revolution and into the U.S. and the very different life waiting for them there. They meet new challenges in and find each other as they adjust and learn to make a life in this new country.

The book abounds with the mystical love of spirits, nature and God that is so commonplace for us Mexicanos. I believe it is hard for people not of our culture to understand just how real the spirits are to us. This is not magical realism but daily life us. Mr. Villasenor shows that aspect of our culture, our grandmothers so well that it brought tears to my eyes as I remembered my own mystical, wise and wonderful grandmother.


The fact that Victor Villasenor is extremely dyslexic and encountered myriad problems in school at a very young age makes this book all the more astounding. He writes with pathos, humor and his love for his beautiful family shines through it all. His simple style of storytelling makes you feel you’re sitting on the floor listening to an uncle or other family member and you are completely enraptured and caught up in his spell

Across the Wire by Luis Alberto Urrea

Luis Urrea is a San Diegan who was born in Mexico. During 1978 – 1982 he worked in Tijuana for an aid group and wrote these haunting and beautiful essays for the San Diego Reader. I first read this book about five years ago and immediately afterwards grabbed everything I could find from Mr. Urrea. This book, as I understand it, is required reading for some Chicano or World Lit classes but it is not as well known as it should be in our community.

The first chapter, Sifting Through the Trash talks about the people that live near the garbage dumps on the border. He speaks of people picking through trash, finding pieces of meat that are not too rotten to eat. There are the people who watch the dompe, or junkyard every night to see what gets tossed that can be of use.

Urrea writes with beauty of the horror of such abject poverty just across the border away from the vast consumerism in the United States. He makes us appreciate what we have, and opens our eyes to what we take so for granted