My Diary from Here to There/Mi Diario De Aqui Hasta All

My Diary from Here to There/Mi Diario De Aqui Hasta Alla
Author: Amada Irma Perez
Illustrator:Maya Christina Gonzalez (Illustrator)

My Diary From Here to There/Mi diario De Aqui Hasta Alla was better than good, it's a great book and I fell in love with it.

The book tells the story of Amada, a young girl living in Juarez, Mexico who has just found out that her family is going to be making a big move to the United States. Her diary chronicles her feelings and fears, her hopes and dreams. She is worried to be leaving to a strange new land and leaving behind all that she loves in Mexico. The author is a third grade teacher and the book is based on her own move as a youngster. There is some mighty fine and poetic writing in this little book.

As Amada writes about the tortilla shop in her Juarez neighborhood, the line "hands blurring like hummingbirds wings" describing the women making tortillas by hand struck me to the core with it's simple beauty. This is poetry. The diary is bilingual and the language in Spanish is just, if not more poetic and lovely.

My Diary From Here to There is a thoughtful and moving account of a family making a big transition. So many of us either remember such a crossing or have family members that have done the same, taking risks to make a new life here. Amada writes of the challenges and of painful separation from her father who has gone ahead to the fields of Delano, California. She writes a brief letter home mentioning a young Cesar Chavez beginning his lifelong fight for the migrant workers.

There are observations in this book that make you stop and think. Take, for example, "two countries looking exactly the same on both sides of the border with giant saguaros pointing up at the pink-orange sky and enormous clouds." Makes you think, no? How different are we really and why is this border even an issue?

The illustrations by Maya Christina Gonzalez are gorgeous. The more I see of her artwork, the more I am struck by it's power and beauty. She has this way of capturing the very essence of the beauty that is the Mexican women - grace, strength, determination, warmth and most of all the love for familia that shines out of their eyes. Each illustration has a mural like quality and with each look, you find more and more to amaze at.

I would encourage anyone to buy this book - adults and children both will be enchanted and moved.

My Invented Country by Isabel Allende

My Invented Country is Isabel Allende’s best book yet, but I have yet to read her version of Zorro which is getting rave reviews including an amazing review by Yxta Maya Murray in the Los Angeles Times Book Review.

This amazing biography takes the reader on a poetic journey though Ms. Allende’s young life. Her writing is stellar and poetic. This book is to be savored for its beauty of language. Writers dream of crafting sentences like these. Lovers of language will adore this book for it’s symmetry and grace. Readers of all ages will love it for its beautiful and absorbing story.

You know, it’s a funny thing about books and readers, the true book lover, not just the person who read the best sellers because they think they should or because everyone in the office is talking about it and they don’t want to feel left out. The true book lover anticipates and lives in hope that the next book will transcend the ordinary, take humble prose and uplift it to something else, something magical. That doesn’t happen often. There are plenty of good and well written books out there, don’t get me wrong. But the sublime, no those are rare.

My Invented Country is one of those to me. I opened the book with my usual hope and expectation, a little more hopeful because it was an Allende book, and was immediately caught up in the beauty of the language. The love Ms. Allende has for her country, her memories and family simply shine through.

I wonder just how many people after reading this book, made travel plans to Chile. I know I wanted to. I know I plan on going soon and that I think is the power of words, to transcend reality, to enthrall, to sweep away on a literary magic carpet, to urge the reader to expand their horizons, to see things in different shades. Gracias, Isabel Allende for the amazing trip!