(2) K-3 Illustrated by Leslie Staub. In this gentle story, Haitian American Saya's mother is incarcerated because she has no papers. Danticat's direct, resonant prose doesn't shy away from the realities--telling of the loneliness of missing your mother and the trauma of saying goodbye at the detention facility. Staub's naive-style oil paintings keep the focus on the child; the larger issue of the plight of refugees and immigrants makes the story universal.

Reviewer: Robin L. Smith | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2015

(3) YA The Boyers get in a horrific car accident, resulting in numerous severe injuries to the family members. While her mother and father are conscious, Giselle remains in a coma-like state, thinking about life with her beloved twin, Isabelle. Gentle and contemplative, this book focuses more on the internal than the physical, and the experience of pain rather than the surpassing of it.

Reviewer: Sian Gaetano

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Alix Delinois. A boy buried in the Port-au-Prince rubble imagines doing things he loves on each of eight days awaiting rescue. These include flying kites and playing soccer; on the sad fifth day, though, his best friend, also trapped, dies. Every double-page spread is filled with deep acrylic strokes as bright as the tropics, with the boy's hopeful eyes looking directly at readers.

Reviewer: Robin L. Smith | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2010

(3) 4-6 Royal Diaries series. In a mature voice, young Anacaona, a future Taíno chief, contemplates life as she records her daily activities. Disturbing premonitions foretell the invasion of European treasure seekers; her village must defend their culture and their lives. Set in Haiti in 1490, the story ends on a hopeful note, but an illustrated afterword recounts the near annihilation of the Taínos. Glos.

Reviewer: Christina Dorr

(2) YA First Person Fiction series. The two books in this new series give narrative life to the American immigrant experience. In both novels, a thirteen-year-old protagonist records in her diary her feelings about, in Flight, leaving Cuba for Miami in 1967 or, in Mountains, leaving Haiti for New York in 2000. The excellence of the writing and the resilient outlook of both first-person fictions set a high standard for this series. [Review covers these First Person Fiction titles: Behind the Mountains and Flight to Freedom.]

Reviewer: Susan P. Bloom | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2003