Enchanted Air: Two Cultures, Two Wings: A Memoir

author: Margarita Engle

illustrator: Edel Rodriguez 

Atheneum, 2015 

grades 5-up 

Cuban American

Margarita Engle’s parents met in 1947, when her father, an artist from the US, visited the Museo Romántico in Trinidad de Cuba, her mother’s hometown; “it was love at first sight.” Although they didn’t speak each other’s language, he proposed marriage, and she said yes.

Margarita grew up between two languages and two cultures. In this memoir in free verse, she describes her childhood trips to Cuba, her father’s Jewish family, and her life in the United States where—as “a misfit bookworm” and half-Cuban during the Cold War—she never fit in with her peers in Southern California. She describes the irony of a mother cut off from her family by the revolution, also hounded by US government agents, and shunned by neighbors who suspect they are Communist spies. As a child, she doesn’t understand, “Why are Cubans suddenly spoken of / as enemies? / Not so long ago, Mami’s island / was only known for music / and sugar.”

Enchanted Air offers a nuanced perspective on the conflict between the United States and Cuba that never loses sight of the personal, the perspective of a young girl seeking her voice and an understanding of who she is. Bullies terrify her; so does riding her first horse in Mexico, even though she has pestered her parents for years to let her ride a horse. When she skips grades in school because of her academic ability, she gets in over her head with a fast crowd of outcasts—the only classmates to accept her: “After I race away from that scary / first kiss, I have no hope for love, / or even like.” She is eleven at the time; the boy is 16.  Her older friends drop out of school one by one—pregnant, drug addicted, on public assistance.

Edel Rodriguez’s beautiful cover art evokes the early work of Pablo Picasso, a disembodied face fused with a bird in flight—an image of the magic within imagination. Air, wings, and flight figure prominently in many of the poems. When Margarita’s grandmother has to return to Cuba, she wishes she had “paper wings” to join her; the years before the revolution are dangerous times, with “vultures, too, circling / like a wheel / of darkly winged / questions.”

Young Margarita finds her place as a poet, a traveler of the world, and a keen observer of history, culture and her society’s many paradoxes. How does this child of a Cuban mother end up with a well-used passport, a “disturbing document / that specifically states / it cannot be used for travel / to Cuba”? As in her many historical and biographical works, Engle’s poetry in this memoir resonates with language that is beautiful, fresh, and emotionally true. The back matter, while not comprehensive, offers valuable context for the poems. The final page excerpts José Martí’s Versos Sencillos in Spanish and English, showing Engle as a literary heir of this great Cuban poet.

Enchanted Air has won a number of accolades, including the 2016 Pura Belpré Award, the 2016 Walter Dean Myers Honor Award, and it was a Finalist for the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award. All of these are well deserved and Enchanted Air is highly recommended for both middle grade and young adult readers.

—Lyn Miller-Lachmann
(published 1/20/16)

This review, in a slightly different form, first appeared in The Pirate Tree (thepiratetree.com). We thank The Pirate Tree for permission.

Silver People: Voices from the Panama Canal

author: Margarita Engle

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014 

grades 5-up 

Cuban

While many younger readers in the United States have learned of the civil rights struggle in the South, the story of the Panama Canal has been taught as a heroic conquest of humans against nature. In a powerful novel in verse narrated from multiple perspectives—including the trees and forest creatures—Margarita Engle’s Silver People challenges both parts of this story. Readers see the racial segregation—the white American engineers paid in gold, and the darker Spanish and Black Jamaicans and other islanders paid in silver—as well as the destruction of the environment and its fatal consequences.

Engle’s principal storyteller is Mateo, a Cuban boy who signs a contract to build the canal at age 14 to escape abuse from his father. Nearly ten years after the end of the Spanish-American War, Mateo’s father, a former revolutionary, is an abusive alcoholic, and many Spaniards who had fought on the losing side are stranded on the island and looking for work. Mateo pretends to be one of them, for the labor contractors are only hiring men with “pure” European blood. In Panama, Mateo discovers only broken promises—low wages, substandard living conditions, bosses who care nothing for their workers; and bunkmates, Spanish anarchists, who scapegoat the clueless adolescent to protect themselves when the bosses discover their illegal newspaper. In the poem “Color Coded,” Mateo describes his stark introduction to racism, as well as to the harsh conditions of the land where he has signed on to work:

A foreman commands us to line up

by country:

Americans, Frenchmen, Dutch.

Spaniards, Greeks, Italians.

Jamaicans, Barbadians, Haitians.

Each work crew is a different shade

of light or dark,

but when the foreman orders us

to stand still while we’re measured

for our coffins,

dark and light faces

all look equally

shocked.

Used to fighting with his father, Mateo spars with a Jamaican worker, Henry, who had signed a labor contract to provide money for his younger siblings’ schooling but has discovered that his low wages (the Black workers make only half of what the Spaniards make for the same jobs) aren’t even enough to pay his own expenses. Anita, an Indigenous girl who trades him herbs for paintings, and Augusto, a Puerto Rican engineer and master painter who finds himself demoted from “gold” to “silver” after the bigoted George Goethals takes over the project, help the young Mateo as he struggles to survive. While escape into the forest may be Mateo’s only option—an option made more difficult by his bouts with malaria—the consequences of getting caught trying to escape a contract are horrific.

Engle’s free verse is vivid and eloquent. So much is said with very few words. Equally poignant are the poems from the perspectives of howler monkeys, who scream for the invaders to “GO!”; the mosquitoes, snakes, and vultures who threaten the men; and the trees that fall to the men and machines. A poem from the trees’ perspective, “If Only,” reads:

If we could move swiftly

we would run

leap

fly

but our only movement

is growth

less

and less

growth

after each sunrise

of dynamite explosions

and sharpened blades

of the ruthless

ax.

Silver People has wide appeal, from reluctant readers to serious history buffs, and it provides an essential counterpoint to the textbook narrative of the Panama Canal’s construction. At a time when Nicaragua has become the target of another canal-building project (this time initiated by a Chinese enterprise), Engle’s story-poem offers a vision of what will happen and a lesson on the importance of knowing our history. Silver People, which won the 2015 Américas Award, is highly recommended.

—Lyn Miller-Lachmann
(published 8/9/15)

Sky Painter: Louis Fuertes, Bird Artist

author: Margarita Engle  

illustrator: Aliona Bereghici 

Two Lions / Amazon Children’s Publishing, 2015

grades 1-3 

Puerto Rican

How many children know the name of Louis Agassiz Fuertes, whom Engle calls “the world’s greatest bird artist”—the New York-born Puerto Rican artist who painted birds in the wild and whose work helped encourage wildlife conservation all over the world? Now, because of Engle’s amazing picture biography in verse, more will.

Like John James Audubon, Fuertes had a talent for drawing and a particular interest in birds. But unlike his predecessor—who killed his “subjects” in order to pose them “naturally”—Fuertes taught himself how to paint living birds in flight, in their own habitats. As Engle writes in his voice, “I practice/ painting quickly, while wings/ swoop/ and race/ across/ wild/ blue/ sky,/ so swift,/ and so alive!”

Engle’s brilliant economy of words is matched only by her affection for her subjects. In a series of free-verse poems, she tells Fuertes’ story in the first person, so young children will identify with the boy whose passions and talents would not be reined in by his parents’ staid ambitions for him. Engle writes, “Papi scolds in Spanish, and Mama scolds/ in English; but they are both proud/ of my serious/ bird art.”

As a young man, Fuertes travels the world to observe and paint his beloved birds. In Alaska:

I whistle.

Birds answer.
I follow.
Blue shadows.
White snow.
Clear ice.
The beauty
of flight
like a dance
in the clouds,
a graceful ballet
of wild swans.

And as an adult—now an accomplished and famed artist—he invites neighborhood children, who call him “the Bird Man,” into his studio, where he regales them with stories of his travels and invites them to draw “their own funny/ wild/ silly/ strange/ beautiful/ birds.”

Bereghici’s lovely illustrations, rendered in watercolor and ink on a palette of bright natural colors with lots of white space, both highlight the details of Fuertes’s wild bird paintings and leave room for the birds’ common names, each penned on its own ribbon banner.

Young readers will be enticed by other illustrations as well, such as a wild crow on the windowsill, holding young Louis’s paintbrush. Or a not-so-bemused Eastern Screech Owl chick, loosely tied to a table leg, “posing” for Louis. Or Louis’ having bandaged the wing of an injured bird, while a cat, aghast at a missed opportunity, looks on.

Throughout, Bereghici’s illustrations complement Engle’s story of a boy, then a young man, then an adult, always with an expression of wonder at what he’s been given to do. I especially like the scene of Fuertes’s children, with that same wondrous look on their faces, as their father paints a portrait of a captive loon who’s been given temporary residence in the family bathtub. After all, how many children get to host a wild loon? In the bathtub?

After reading this lovely book, I hope that teachers and librarians will plan field trips—even in the city, even just around the block—so that children can appreciate (and draw, if they want to) elements of the natural world all around them, including, but not limited to, “their own funny/ wild/ silly/ strange/ beautiful/ birds.” The Sky Painter is highly, highly recommended.

—Beverly Slapin
(published 2/13/15)

Mountain Dog

author: Margarita Engle

illustrators: Olga and Aleksey Ivanov 

Square Fish / Macmillan, 2013 

grades 4-6 

Cuban American

In Engle’s elegant free verse, Mountain Dog relates the story of 11-year-old Tony, whose mother is imprisoned for running a dog-fighting ring in Los Angeles; and his partnership with his Tío, a forest ranger in the Sierra Nevada, with whom he is sent to live; and with Gabe, Tío’s search-and-rescue dog. In alternating narratives by Tony (“the boy”) and Gabe (“the dog”), young readers see how the boy slowly grows from a confused, distrustful, fearful young person to someone who has learned to deal with conflict, inherited his great-uncle’s passion for rescue—and is beginning to know his path.

Tony begins his narrative matter-of-factly:   

In my other life there were pit bulls.

The puppies weren’t born vicious,

but Mom taught them how to bite,

turning meanness into money,

until she got caught.

As he deals with his sadness, Tony’s suffering is palpable, but as Tío Leonilo and Gabe welcome him into their lives, the healing process begins. Here, Tony learns how to navigate the wilderness:

I learn how to estimate

the temperature of soil

at a 6-inch depth

by counting beats

per minute

in the song

of a cricket.

Fast insect music

means the earth is warm.

Slow bug songs come only

On long, cold cricket nights.

And Gabe, in his dog way, learns about Tony:

My nose has wishful moods

when the nostrils imagine sniffing

adventure smells that I can’t quite name

with my dog words.

Tony, you look wishful too.

Does your boy nose dream

of exploring wild scent trails

in unknown air?

On many levels, Mountain Dog is a story about a boy’s recovering from the traumas of child abuse and learning to trust again, about discovery, about making life-affirming choices and finding his path. And in this, it succeeds, beautifully. As well, Engle has a plethora of details—about wildlife and wilderness, about physical survival in a harsh environment, about selecting a puppy and training a search-and-rescue dog, and about the absolute necessity of mastering mathematical calculations—seamlessly woven into this emotion-filled story of a boy’s coming to terms with his past life and opening himself to the possibilities of moving forward.

Olga and Alexsey Ivanov’s black-and-white, pen-and-ink illustrations are appealing and evocative. Some are simply rendered and, where needed, hatchlines add detail and perspective to humans, domestic and wild animals, and the wilderness. On the frontispiece (repeated on an interior page), for instance, we see Gabe’s head leaning into Tony’s left hand, while Tony’s body, drawn in far less detail, faces the other direction. It’s clear that Tony is barely allowing Gabe to make contact—and Gabe is doing what he’s been trained to do, being there, being available, waiting to see what more is required of him. Opposite the first page of text, we see Tony, looking almost directly at the reader. His large eyes are mistrusting—he’s been through a lot—and he’s thinking, as the chapter title says, “no no no maybe.” The book’s final illustration is of Tony’s new puppy, whom Tony will train to be a rescue dog. The puppy’s eyes are also large—open to all the possibilities that await him with his new family.

My one problem with Mountain Dog is Tío’s brief story of his childhood and early teenage years in revolutionary Cuba (“the troubled island”): “Strange rules. Censored books./ Rationed food. Secret police./ Neighborhood spies”; his escape from the secret police on a homemade raft during hurricane season, and his subsequent rescue at sea by a fisherman.

In truth, the Cuban people had to protect their revolution and defend their tiny country to the death—to prevent CIA-funded counterrevolutionaries, giant US corporations, and organized crime, from taking back the island. At the beginning, life was very difficult and people fled because of the US embargo, which strangled the Cuban economy and caused serious shortages and the rationing of food. As some say today, “teníamos hambre”—“we were hungry.” But, absent any historical context, Tío’s story will lead young readers to think of Cuba as a regimented, controlled country that oppresses its people.

To lend balance and encourage discussion, teachers and librarians might supplement this section of Mountain Dog with George Ancona’s beautiful photo-essay, Cuban Kids (Cavendish, 2000), which gives an honest picture of life on the island. “Despite the hardships, the shortages, and the embargo,” Ancona writes, “Cuban kids are growing up with a love of their country, traditions, and culture. Their many skills will contribute to making a better future for Cuba and the world.”

Mountain Dog is highly recommended.

—Beverly Slapin
(published 2/12/15)

Wild Book

 

author: Margarita Engle

illustrator (cover): Yuyi Morales

Harcourt, 2012

grades 4-up 

Cuban

It is 1912, a chaotic time following Cuba’s war for independence from Spain and the subsequent US occupation of the island. It’s a time of lawlessness, including white race riots against the island’s African-Cuban population and rampaging kidnappers who carry off children for ransom. It is at this time in this place that we meet 11-year old Josefa de la Caridad Uría Peña, called “Fefa” by her family and “Fefa la fea” by her sisters when they are taunting her.

Fefa’s family, like most Cuban families here, is mixed: Her father’s “daring” ancestors were Basque, her mother’s were Indian and the “musical” Canary Islanders, and her cousin’s African parents had been enslaved. “When I ask Papá to explain,” Fefa says, he tells her, “If you don’t have blood / from one tribe, you have it / from another—El que no tiene / sangre del Congo / tiene del Carabalí.”

“I am glad to know / that I am part bird-person,” she says, “because birds come in all colors, / and they belong to many tribes. / Maybe I should just sing / pretty bird songs at school, / instead of struggling to read / OUT LOUD.”

Engle’s lyrical free verse, an elegant economy of words, paints a picture from the life of her maternal grandmother as a young girl living with her large extended family on a farm in the Cuban countryside in the early 20^th century. Fefa has been diagnosed with “word blindness” (dyslexia) and, every day, she struggles with her “word fear.” “Fefa will never be able / to read, or write, / or be happy / in school,” the doctor tells her mother.

But Fefa’s mother is not having any of it. She gives Fefa a book with blank pages—a “wild book”—in which to practice writing. “Think of this little book / as a garden,” she suggests to her daughter. “Throw the wildflower seeds / all over each page, she advises. / Let the words sprout / like seedlings, / then relax and watch / as your wild diary / grows.”

“When I listen as Mamá reads / OUT LOUD,” Fefa says, “I imagine / the height of my own wild hopes.” Encouraged by her mother’s love of poetry, especially the poems of the great Nicaraguan poet, Rubén Darío—and not without struggle—Fefa opens her wild book and writes one bold word: “Valentía.” Courage. “Maybe if I claim / my own share of courage / often enough, it will appear.”

All that Fefa is, goes into her wild book, and young readers will see her blossoming as do the wild flowers in her book. “My drifts of verse,” she says, “are free words, / wild and flowing. / The world is filled / with things that flow, / like water, / feelings, / daydreams, wind…”

And, months later, when her family is threatened, it is Fefa’s ability to decipher the mystery of the written word—“I tell what I know. / I fly to the truth of words”—that saves them.

On the gorgeous cover painting, by talented, multiple award-winning Yuyi Morales, is a young, happy, confident Fefa, her brown eyes smiling and arms open to the world, wild orchids in her hair and a bird superimposed on her face. On her lap is her wild book, a beautiful wild garden, with leaves and tendrils and buds growing out of it, framing the child. She is holding her pencil loosely in her left hand, allowing it to create all the beautiful words in her beautiful wild book.

And there is a wild caimán in front of Fefa’s book, looking directly at the reader and smiling its wild caimán smile, confident that it will not wind up on her family’s dinner table this day.

I’m tempted to copy the entirety of The Wild Book into this review. It’s that beautiful. Highly recommended.

—Beverly Slapin
(published 4/9/13)

Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba

author: Margarita Engle

Henry Holt, 2009

grades 7-up 

Cuban

Newbery Honor-winning poet Margarita Engle perks up her readers’ interests with Tropical Secrets, her third well-researched historical-fiction novel written in simple, colorful verse. She immerses imaginary characters into a true, little known, horrific, anti-Semitic situation that took place in Cuba during World War II. The poems, told in first-person by three characters, focus on the period between June 1939 and April 1942.

The book begins with Daniel, a 13-year-old Jewish boy whose parents have sent to “the Americas” to save him from the Nazi Holocaust. First his ship sails to the US and then to Canada, but both countries turn the refugees away at the harbor. If Cuba does not/ allow us to land,/ will we be sent back/ to Germany’s/ shattered night? Cuba lets them land, and Daniel begins to struggle with language (I promise myself that I will never/ let anyone change the rhythm/of my name.), culture and loneliness.

Paloma, a Cuban 13-year-old who feels for the sad strangers, befriends Daniel, but her father doesn’t have her charitable heart. Rather, he takes advantage of refugees: No bribe, no visa.

David, an elderly Russian ice cream seller, becomes mentor to both Paloma and Daniel. Here Engel could have done better. Although David’s voice is older and wiser than Daniel’s, it’s confusing to the reader when names start with the same two letters.

Yet the characters are well developed, the story is intriguing, and the setting authentically transporting the reader to the true heart of Havana.           

Daniel from the ship: This tropical heat/ is a weight in the sky/ crushing my breath.

Daniel speaking of David: He speaks to me with his hands dancing/ and his voice musical, just like the islanders/ who sound like chattering/ wild birds.

Daniel speaking about Havana: The city of Havana is never quiet./ Sleep is impossible—there are always/ the drums of passing footsteps/ and the horns of traffic/ and choirs of dogs barking;/ and orchestra of vendors singing/ and neighbors laughing/ and children fighting.

The historical details don’t stop with the refugees, some of whom had a “J” for Jew stamped on their passports. Through Paloma, we learn that orphan boys were taken to a Hershey ranch in the US and that in Cuba an orphan could find a home with any adult who happened to share the same name. And when I asked her why the carnival was in the summer and not before Lent, as it is in other Latin American countries, Engle told me: “In Cuba, the biggest carnival is after the sugar harvest. Originally, this was to avoid giving slaves time off. After the revolution, with highly publicized harvest quotas, the purpose was similar, to avoid giving time off during the busy season. Life is strange.”

Life may be strange, but Margarita Engle knows Cuban history and, in Tropical Secrets, she shares what otherwise we would have not learned. Tropical Secrets is highly recommended. 

 —Carmen T. Bernier-Grand
(published 4/8/13)