Celiane, her mother and older brother, Moy, are living in Haiti while her father is in Brooklyn, New York. During the violent presidential elections in Haiti in the year 2000, both Celiane and her mother are injured in a bomb explosion. The family decides the time has come to be reunited. Celiane is sad to be leaving her beautiful country and relatives, but so eager to see Papa. Her joy fades quickly, however, overwhelmed by the changes in her life. Her new middle school in Brooklyn is huge. When she gets lost the first time she tries to get back to their apartment on her own, she feels she’s failed her Papa. At home, her father and brother begin arguing—Moy wants to pursue art, while Papa wants him to attend the university once he learns enough English. Even her parents, who had missed each other so much, are fighting. Their 2-bedroom apartment seems so very small in the midst of it all. Edwidge Danticat’s first book for young reader’s is written as journal entries in Celiane’s sensitive, first-person voice. It’s a swiftly paced novel grounded in details that lend weight and realism to Celiane’s situation as she chronicles the events in her life, which unfold to reveal both pleasures and disappointments and, ultimately, a future she looks toward with hope. Danticat briefly recounts her own story of coming to the United States from Haiti as a child in an afterword. (Ages 11-14)

The series dedicated to the immigrant experience in modern America starts off with a moving novel of one family’s struggles in Haiti and New York.

It is election time in Haiti, and bombs are going off in the capital city of Port-au-Prince. During a visit from her home in rural Haiti, Celiane Espérance and her mother are nearly killed. Looking at her country with new eyes, Celiane gains a fresh resolve to be reunited with her father in Brooklyn, New York. The harsh winter and concrete landscape of her new home are a shock to Celiane, who witnesses her parents’ struggle to earn a living, her brother’s uneasy adjustment to American society, and her own encounters with learning difficulties and school violence.

“The excellence of the writing and the resilient outlook of both first-person fictions set a high standard for this series.” —The Horn Book

“The author captures the color and texture of Haitian life as well as the heroine’s adjustment to New York. While readers may want to hear more about her experiences in Brooklyn, they will appreciate the truthfulness of the family’s struggle to reconnect.” —Publishers Weekly