Somos como las nubes / We Are Like the Clouds

by Jorge Argueta, Alfonso Ruano (Illustrator), Elisa Amado (Translator)

Overview

Why are young people leaving their country to walk to the United States to seek a new, safe home? Over 100,000 such children have left Central America. This book of poetry helps us to understand why and what it is like to be them.

This powerful book by award-winning Salvadoran poet Jorge Argueta describes the terrible process that leads young people to undertake the extreme hardships and risks involved in the journey to what they hope will be a new life of safety and opportunity. A refugee from El Salvador’s war in the eighties, Argueta was born to explain the tragic choice confronting young Central Americans today who are saying goodbye to everything they know because they fear for their lives. This book brings home their situation and will help young people who are living in safety to understand those who are not.

Compelling, timely and eloquent, this book is beautifully illustrated by master artist Alfonso Ruano who also illustrated The Composition, considered one of the 100 Greatest Books for Kids by Scholastic’s Parent and Child Magazine.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781554988495
Publisher:	Groundwood Books
Publication date:	10/11/2016
Edition description:	Bilingual
Pages:	36
Product dimensions:	9.30(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.70(d)
Lexile:	NP (what's this?)
Age Range:	7 - 12 Years

About the Author

JORGE ARGUETA, a Pipil Nahua from El Salvador and Poet Laureate Emeritus of San Mateo County, is a prize-winning author of more than twenty children’s books. His book Somos como las nubes / We Are Like the Clouds won the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award and was named to USBBY’s Outstanding International Books List, ALA Notable Children’s Books and the Cooperative Children’s Book Center Choices. Jorge is the founder of the International Children's Poetry Festival Manyula and the Library of Dreams, a non-profit organization that promotes literacy in El Salvador. Jorge divides his time between San Francisco, California, and El Salvador.

Alfonso Ruano is an illustrator and the art director for Grupo SM, the world's largest publisher of Spanish-language children's books. He lives in Madrid, Spain.

ELISA AMADO is a Guatemalan-born author and translator. She has written My Friend (Mi amiga), illustrated by Alfonso Ruano; Un Barrilete para el Día de los Muertos / Barrilete: A Kite for the Day of the Dead; Cousins (Primas), illustrated by Luis Garay; and Tricycle (El triciclo), illustrated by Alfonso Ruano, which is on the Américas Award Commended List and is a USBBY Outstanding International Book. She lives in Toronto.

Editorial Reviews

★ 10/24/2016
Poems written in Spanish and English poignantly address the struggles of child refugees fleeing Central America for the U.S. Shifting among the viewpoints of several children, the poems recount the sadness of leaving old lives behind and the dangers of the journey: “Don’t let us fall/ into the hands of the migra,/ and never in the hands of the traffickers,” reads a prayer to Santo Toribio, “saint of the immigrants.” Ruano’s lush paintings feature surreal flourishes (a rooster in a track suit, tattooed gang members with cyclopean eyes) as well as haunting images of families crossing deserts and crowding onto trains. A sobering but hopeful collection. Ages 7–12. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Argueta and Ruano present a unique and much-needed perspective on the reasons driving young people to immigrate to the U.S. … extremely vital.

STARRED REVIEW Booklist

Delicately illustrated and painstakingly presented, Somos como las nubes/ We are Like the Clouds is highly recommended, compassionate reading.

Midwest Book Review

The poems … present the candid perspective of the children's experiences … Delicate illustrations include both realistic portrayals and surreal depictions that complement the textual imagery.

STARRED REVIEW Horn Book

Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award
USBBY's Outstanding International Books List
ALA Notable Children's Books
Cooperative Children's Book Center Choices

"With tenderness and humanity, this bilingual book describes the hopes, fears, and uncertainties of the thousands of displaced children that arrive every year at the southern border of the United States . . . Poignant, heartbreaking, and sadly, timely." — Kirkus, starred review

"Argueta and Ruano present a unique and much-needed perspective on the reasons driving young people to immigrate to the U.S. … extremely vital." — Booklist, starred review

"A much-needed jumping-off point for elementary classroom discussions of refugees and immigration." — School Library Journal

"The poems are vivid and accessible, and Ruano’s earth-toned acrylic illustrations show people on the move who are both fragile and strong at the same time." — Julie Danielson, Kirkus Reviews

"Delicately illustrated and painstakingly presented, Somos como las nubes/ We are Like the Clouds is highly recommended, compassionate reading." — Midwest Book Review

From the Publisher

09/01/2016
Gr 3–6—Argueta likens the spirit of refugee and immigrant children from Central America and Mexico to the movement of clouds in this collection of bilingual poetry. Some of these poems successfully evoke the fear and anxiety generated by this exodus from violence and privation. The portrayal of the tattooed Salvadoran gangs in "El barrio la campanera" is particularly visceral. But most of the poems skirt the edge of urgency, creating an emotional disconnect. Apprehension by the U.S. border patrol is a dreaded terror refugees pray to avoid. But the poem "Nos presentamos a la patrulla" ("We Introduce Ourselves to the Border Patrol") couches the nightmare in terms of an innocuous meet-and-greet. In an introductory poem, "Mi barrio," the author describes a rooster eating a Popsicle ("paleta"), but Ruano features the rooster with a lollipop—the alternate definition of the word. This misinterpretation disrupts the cyclical nature of the Popsicle motif carried forth into the concluding poem. Furthermore, the brutal march across the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts claims countless lives every year, but the image depicted implies that the crossing is nothing more onerous than a day hike. VERDICT Despite flaws, this is a much-needed jumping-off point for elementary classroom discussions of refugees and immigration.—Mary Margaret Mercado, Pima County Public Library, Tucson, AZ

School Library Journal

★ 2016-07-20
With tenderness and humanity, this bilingual book describes the hopes, fears, and uncertainties of the thousands of displaced children that arrive every year at the southern border of the United States.Every year thousands of children from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico leave their home countries and undertake a perilous journey across hundreds of miles in the hope of reaching the United States. They are fleeing crushing poverty and the fear of violence. Some are fleeing with their families, some are hoping to be reunited with a parent or relative in the U.S., and some are leaving parents and siblings behind. How to portray such a hard and harsh reality? Employing free verse, Argueta manages to evoke moments and feelings, softening the rough edges while remaining true to his subject. In poems that follow the harrowing journey, readers keep pace with the children who narrate. They describe their hometowns, the dangers of life in gang-dominated areas, their decisions to leave, border crossings and indecision over whether to turn back or go on, the inhospitable landscapes they traverse only to be met in the end by the border patrol, and, finally, safety in their mothers’ arms. Ruano’s realistic artwork conveys an immediacy that complements and extends the poems, allowing readers not familiar with the experience to be able to “see” it. Poignant, heartbreaking, and, sadly, timely. (author’s note) (Bilingual picture book/poetry. 8 & up)

Kirkus Reviews