Dreamers by Yuyi Morales

        Dreamers by Yuyi Morales was awarded the Pura Belpre Illustrator Award in 2019. The book is based on the physical and emotional journey Morales and her infant son Kelly embark on immigrating from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, to El Paso, Texas, in 1994. Once they arrived in the US, Morales and her son became immigrants and could not return to their home roots. Like most immigrants, they missed things that were familiar to them: their family and friends, the food, jobs, and most importantly, the ability to communicate. One day Morales and her son entered a public library and were intrigued to find a place where there were hundreds of books that you could take off the shelf and look at without anyone fussing at you. The books became a portal for Morales and her son, which was another bridge she crossed into new worlds to find their path and purpose. The illustrations throughout the book were illustrated by Yuyi Morales herself. The illustrations consisted of various acrylic paintings, scanned photographs, personal childhood drawings, and other symbols and items representing her Mexican roots. Every page in the book had something that caught your eye, whether it was the bright colors or the faint messages written in the clouds. In the beginning, the backgrounds of each page are dull, but as the story starts to unfold, the pages come to life and are filled with warmth and color that depicts the process of the journey that Morales and her son completed. In the end, Morales and her son Kelly are considered Dreamers, but not in the sense of what we are used to hearing. At first, Morales did not want to title the book Dreamers because of the political significance of the word. Still, she wanted the title to depict how all immigrants, "regardless of our status, are Dreamers: we enter a new country carried by hopes and dreams, and carrying our own special gifts, to build a better future" (Yuyi Morales). There is a risk when you are making the journey to leave your country and face the challenges a new country creates. However, we dream and fight for a better future because we are dreamers, and we hope to do something better for ourselves. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Folkore

Book: Honestly, Red Riding Hood Was Rotten! (Fable) Author: Trisha Speed Shaskan Illustrator: Gerald Guerlais      Honestly, Red Riding Hood Was Rotten!, is a modern twist of the original Red Riding Hood.  This new tale is based on the Big Bad Wolf's perspective. The characters are illustrated with more exaggerated features. The wolf is black with enhanced features, clearly making him the antagonist in the text. Red Riding Hood is big and plump like a juicy apple and her character is depicted as spoiled and rotten. The tale is the same story we all know, but in the end, the reader learns that people can look good on the outside but on the inside be the complete opposite.  Book: The Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza (Fairytale) Author: Philemon Sturges Illustrator: Amy Walrod     The Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza,  is an adaptation of the all-time classic The Little Red Hen . In this story, the characters are drawn to look more cartoon-based instead of r...
Read more

3 Picture Books

Image
     What Do You Do With An Idea? by Kobi Yam and illustrated by Mae Besom is a story about how our ideas can be strange and different, and we should not be afraid to hide them. The illustrations show the character's idea following him around and how the idea grows and fades when he gives it attention or ignores it. The illustrations are mainly black and white, but the idea is in color. The color takes over the page or fades out depending on how the main character feels about the idea. This text does not qualify as a picture storybook because the images are more advanced, and the focus of the images reflects our own inner thoughts on our ideas.      Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story by Kevin Noble Maillard and illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal is about a Native American family baking fry bread. We see the various steps taken to bake the fry bread and what the fry bread represents through the book. The book also explains some background history of N...
Read more

Onward

Image
     I love to keep things in a theme, and my current theme for my classroom is Disney, of course, which is why the word onward fits the mold for this year. Onward is defined as continually moving forward, and with all the changes that have occurred in the past year the only thing we can do is move forward. Especially in the classroom, we never want students to move backwards in their progress we always want them to climb up and exceed their goals. It takes going through an experience like the year 2020, for students to realize that their learning can now be expanded in many ways. Daily I use literacy to model  for the students how we can utilize new texts and see how we can benefit from it in multiple ways. Not only do we enjoy the content of the text, but we can always take away new information or new messages that we can share with others. When students begin to doubt themselves in their progress, especially their literacy progress, I will remind them that we nee...
Read more