Jorge Argueta's haunting narrative poem about family separation, JIMENA PEREZ PUEDE VOLAR / JIMENA PEREZ CAN FLY, is the winner of a Skipping Stones Honor Award!
Esther Celis, grandmother and Skipping Stones Board President says:
These are two books in one, two front pages, one in English, and the other in Spanish. Each a translation of the other, the same verse format in both languages. It begins as a thoughtful and sweet story about Jimena living a modest and sheltered life with her parents and friends in El Salvador. Unfortunately, gang members can threaten even young children like Jimena and her friends. Her parents decide she won’t be safe; Jimena and her mother risk the long journey north to reunite with family living in the US. Jimena describes the trip; we imagine the danger. She is innocent; we are not. We haven’t forgotten the reports of children separated at the border from their parents. We haven’t forgotten the thousands of Central Americans forced to stay in the Mexican side of the border while applying for asylum in the U.S. Jimena is brave, she keeps telling us her story, and she keeps living despite the cruelty and sadness around her.
Congratulations to the creators of all the winner books under the three categories.
To download the reviews of the 2020 Skipping Stones Honor Books click
http://www.skippingstones.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/2020.BookAwards.reviews.pdf
From the publisher, Arte Público Press:
Ten-year-old Jimena Pérez loves life with her parents in El Salvador. They sell fruit at the market, just like her grandmother and great grandmother did. “Fruits / are a blessing / like you, Jimena,” her mother tells her.
But one day a group of boys threaten her friend Rosenda at school. “You know / what will happen / to your family / if you don’t join us.” Jimena’s parents, afraid gangs will try to recruit her too, decide she must go to the United States with her mother. She is excited and fearful, and doesn’t want to leave her father, friends and dog Sultán. “I felt sad / the way fruit looks / when it’s past ripeness.” By bus, train and on foot, mother and daughter make their way north, until one night, bright lights fill the sky and men in green uniforms rip Jimena from her mother.
Imprisoned with children from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico, Jimena and the others cry for their parents. One boy repeats over and over, “My father’s name is Marcos / He is in Los Angeles.” A box full of books brings her some solace, reminding her of the ones donated to kids at the market in El Salvador. “The letters kiss me / like my mama’s words / like my papa’s words / I am a little bird / Nothing can stop me / I can fly.”
In this poignant narrative poem for kids ages 10-15, award-winning Salvadoran poet Jorge Argueta movingly captures the fear that drives so many Central Americans to flee their countries and the anguish created by separating children from their parents at the US border. Putting a human face on the millions of people who flee their homelands each year, this book will help young people understand the difficulties of migration and leaving behind all that is dear.
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