Road to Santiago

Description:

A fictional story about a boy and his family in Havana who overcome obstacles to reach their relatives in Santiago to celebrate Christmas during the Cuban revolution in the 1950s.

Brief description:

D. H. Figueredo is the author of Lee & Low's When This World Was New and The Road to Santiago. A native of Cuba who has lived in New Jersey since he was a teenager. Figueredo is the director of the Bloomfield College Library and is the author of Cleaning Day and Big Snowball Fight, published by Bebop Books. He lives in Piscataway, New Jersey, with his wife and their children.

Review Quotes:

"Torrecilla illustrates this odyssey with brightly lit scenes of tight-lipped figures in 1950s-style hair and dress, posed against clean, if somewhat rundown, urban and rural backgrounds. . . It's the remembered ringing of the cathedral bells, and the taste of the sweet buñelo in Figueredo's hand, however, that will leave the strongest impression on children" -- Booklist

"Focused sharply on the child's longing to celebrate with his relatives, the story of their journey reflects the circumstances of civil war without partisan rancor or needless violence. Torrecilla's full-color illustrations embody the warmth of the text and expand on it, filling the pages with lush tropical foliage, period dress, aging vehicles, and the soldiers of the embattled president. Coupled with Liz Rosenberg's The Silence in the Mountains, (1999), this can be used to present a relatively non-threatening look at how civil violence, in two very different locales, can affect a child's life. It also adds to the always sparsely filled shelf of first-rate multicultural Christmas tales. . ." -- Kirkus Reviews

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