Hurricane Dancers: The First Caribbean Pirate Shipwreck

by Margarita Engle

Overview

Quebrado has been traded from pirate ship to ship in the Caribbean Sea for as long as he can remember. The sailors he toils under call him el quebrado—half islander, half outsider, a broken one. Now the pirate captain Bernardino de Talavera uses Quebrado as a translator to help navigate the worlds and words between his mother's Taíno Indian language and his father's Spanish.

But when a hurricane sinks the ship and most of its crew, it is Quebrado who escapes to safety. He learns how to live on land again, among people who treat him well. And it is he who must decide the fate of his former captors. Latino interest.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780805092400
Publisher:	Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
Publication date:	03/15/2011
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.90(d)
Lexile:	1170L (what's this?)
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

Margarita Engle is the Cuban-American author of many verse novels, memoirs, and picture books, including The Surrender Tree, All the Way to Havana, Bravo!, Drum Dream Girl, and Dancing Hands. Awards include a Newbery Honor, Pura Belpré Medals, Golden Kite Award, Walter Honor, Jane Addams Award, PEN U.S.A., and NSK Neustadt Prize, among others. Margarita served as the national 2017-2019 Young People’s Poet Laureate. Recent young adult verse novels include Wings in the Wild and Wild Dreamers. Recent picture books include Water Day and The Sculptors of Light.

Margarita was born in Los Angeles, but developed a deep attachment to her mother’s homeland during childhood summers with relatives on the island. She studied agronomy and botany along with creative writing, and now lives in central California.

Editorial Reviews

The unique juxtaposition of poetry and cruelty creates a peculiar literary tension.” —VOYA

“Once again, Engle fictionalizes historical fact in a powerful, original story.” —Booklist, STARRED REVIEW

“Unique and inventive, this is highly readable historical fiction that provides plenty of fodder for discussion.” —School Library Journal

“Like intersecting rip tides, several first-person narratives converge in this verse novel of the sixteenth century.” —Horn Book Magazine

“…the subject matter is an excellent introduction to the age of exploration and its consequences, showing slavery sinking its insidious roots in the Americas and the price paid by those who were there first.” —Publishers Weekly

“Taken individually the stories are slight, but they work together elegantly; the notes and back matter make this a great choice for classroom use.” —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

Three main characters tell intertwined stories in this skillfully structured novel-in-poems about real-life pirates of the Caribbean.
—The Washington Post

Mary Quattlebaum