Behind the mountains /

Gr. 5-9. In a new First Person Fiction series about coming to America, acclaimed adult author Danticat tells the story of a contemporary Haitian American family through the diary entries of a young teen. Celiane Esperance loves her home in the Haitian mountains, but she hasn't seen Papa since he left for New York five years ago, and she misses him all the time. Long-awaited visas come through, and Celiane, her mother, and her older brother join Papa in Brooklyn, but it isn't the blissful reunion she dreamed about. The weaving together of fact and fiction is contrived (instructive is the term used in the general series introduction), especially in the first half of the book, set in Haiti, where the explanations of history and recent presidential politics seem wedged into Celiane's diary. But the short journal entries make for a readable, immediate narrative, and when Danticat sets aside the educational for the personal, her simple, lyrical writing tells a gripping homecoming story of tension, disappointment, anger, and hope. Her essay «My Personal Journey,» about her own coming to Brooklyn at age 12 in 1981, is a moving final commentary. Hazel Rochman.

In this novel, part of the First Person Fiction series, 13-year-old Celiane recounts her journey from her mountain village in Haiti to join her father in Brooklyn in a "charming, innocent voice," according to PW. Ages 11-15. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Gr 5 Up-As the best student in the class, Celiane is given a "sweet little book" in which she decides to keep a journal. Her entries date from October 2000 to March 2001, and chronicle the family's departure from their homeland of Haiti to join her father, who had immigrated to New York City five years earlier. In graceful prose, Danticat seamlessly weaves together all that such a decision involves: the difficulties of rural life on the island and a longing for an absent parent combined with a fondness for her tiny mountain village with "the rainbows during sun showers- the smell of pinewood burning, the golden-brown sap dripping into the fire"; and the excitement and violence of Port-au-Prince where Celiane and her mother are injured in bombings before the elections. When Celiane, her mother, and her 19-year-old brother are finally approved to enter the U.S., the teen knows everything will be all right as soon as she sees her father, but there are the unavoidable frictions among family members, fueled not only by the separation and adjustment to a new country, but also by the natural maturing process that the children undergo. In this gem of a book, Danticat explores the modern immigrant experience through the eyes of one teen.-Diane S. Marton, Arlington County Library, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(Middle School, High School) See review on page 69. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.

A 13-year-old Haitian girl describes, over the course of five months, her life in Haiti and then in New York as she, her mother, and her brother join her father, who left Haiti years before. Celiane loves her life in the mountain village of Beau Jour; she is near her grandparents, the mountains agree with her, and she is the recent recipient of a journal from her teacher--because she is such a good writer. The only hole in her life is that left by her father, who sends a cassette tape addressing each family member in turn, but from whom she feels increasingly estranged by time and distance. When the bus she and her mother are riding in gets blown up in pre-election violence--the year is 2000, and Jean-Bertrand Aristide is running for re-election--the effort to reunite with her father moves into high gear. Her Tante Rose, a nurse, pulls some diplomatic strings, and suddenly they are all together in New York. This is Danticat's (After the Dance, p. 782, etc.) first novel for children, and it shares with others that have gone before it a tendency to write down to the audience. The diary entries are by and large flat; Celiane writes of the violence in curiously disengaged tones, considering that she and her mother are victims. Likewise, when the narrative moves to New York, the upheaval this creates for the family is related from a distance, despite the supposed current nature of the diary: "It wasn't anything [Papa] said, just the way his face looked, tightly drawn and strained. Perhaps we, especially me, were going to be more of a burden to him than he had first thought." It is unfortunate that there are so few children's novels of Haiti that this offering naturally begs comparison to Frances Temple's electrifying A Taste of Salt (1992). This, alas, is a pale successor. (Fiction. 9-14)