Zeitoun by Dave Eggers. Vintage Books, 2009. 337 pages.

What Work Is-Poems by Philip Levine. Alfred A. Knopf, 1997. 77 pages

Carmen: an urban adaptation of the opera by Walter Dean Myers. Egmont, NY, 2011. 140 pages

I love the opera Carmen and I love Walter Dean Myers and I wanted to love this but I could not. It is set up exactly as a play-- the settings, the stage instructions, the music. Set in El Barrio (Spanish Harlem) the characters are modern reincarnations of the original novela, pre-Bizet, infact-- modeled after West Side Story. Factory workers, cops instead of soldiers, a Hip Hop Star instead of a Toreador, but the story remains basically the same. I still love the idea, but i thought the dialog was stilted and unnatural ("We'll do the caper..."?) and many of the characters and settings were dangerously close to stereotyping. Please-- i still love Walter Dean Myers and he added an author's note explaining why he wanted to work with Carmen, he spoke about the very public music in the Harlem of his youth, about the stereotyping he had encountered in different versions of the novella-- in fact i enjoyed the author's note very much-- much more than the novela.
Unfortunately, I can see adults liking this a lot, but i do not see it speaking to kids-- only to an adult idea of what speaks to kids. Myers does not usually write about Latinos, and Carmen, unfortunately, is not what he does best. Sorry. it was very well reviewed but I was so disappointed.

The Dreamer by Pam Muñoz Ryan. Scholastic Press, 2010. 334 Pages

Fictionalized account of the sad childhood of the Great Latin American Poet, Pablo Neruda. Young Pablo is a sickly frail boy growing up with a loving but subservient grandmother and an overbearing, bully father in early 20th century Chile. Young Pablo's gift with words was noted early and often, but his father considered the field of "letters" feminine and unsuitable for a son of his.

Alvin Ho: allergic to girls, school and other scary things by Lenore Look. Schwartz & Wade, 2008. 170 pages

Meet Alvin Ho-lives in Concord Massachusetts, obsessed with Henry David Thoreau and all things local history, middle child in an average Chinese American household, smart and funny and scared of everything- so much so that he is unable to speak in school at all. A great story for early chapter readers- say second through 4th grade--Alvin is funny and clever and full of interesting fact (glossary at the end!) but also serious and thoughtful with the continuing theme of finding your voice running through. Few book at this reading level with boys as main characters-- I love introducing kids to this series.

Araminta Spookie: My Haunted House as told to Angie Sage. Katherine Tegen Books, 2006. 133 pages.

The Help: a novel by Kathryn Stockett. Berkely Books, NY, 2009. 535 pages.