1. Ann Jaramillo wrote it because her "students find very book that reflect their lives and experiences" and she felt the need to fill the cultural gap in literature (more on why this intrigues me later)
and
2. All of the freshman at Memorial read it and I was curious to see what it was all about.
While there were a few hang-up along the way (more on that later too) I really enjoyed the book. That is, until the end. The final "chapter" was just bad. I can appreciated what Jaramillo was trying to accomplish with it, but it wasn't a success. Considering everything else that the children had been through, and how detailed in writing about it Jaramillo was, the ending seemed a little dismissive. Kind of like she was saying "OK, they made it. Now they're fine. A little sad on this day, but other than that life is awesome", which kind of killed the authenticity aspect for me. The book isn't very long (which is fantastic for a lot of reasons), so I feel like she could have expanded juuuuuuuust a little bit more. Maybe do a chapter (which in this novel is only 3-5 pages long) that is about their first year in the US, and then on the first five years, and then have the final chapter catch the last five years of their first decade in the country. I don't know. I was just a little bummed out by the way she ended it. It's a fantastic story, though, for what it was hoping to accomplish.
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