Esperanza Rising (2000)

Recommended Ages: Gr. 5-7 (appropriate for 4th)

Plot Summary: The night before Esperanza's birthday, her father doesn't come home from the fields. Worried, beloved servants go out looking for him and come home with awful news. He was murdered by bandits. Her home is left to her and her mother, but the land is not allowed to be owned by a women, so it's willed to Esperanza's uncle. With greed and power as his motivation, Tio Luis offers to marry Ramona so that she can continue to live in the house, but threatens to send Esperanza to boarding school. Ramona refuses the offer. Later, their house burns down. With nowhere to live and fear of Tio Luis controlling them, heartbroken Ramona and Esperanza sneak to the United States, with the help of their former servants. They must leave Abuelita behind, who injured her ankle getting out of the burning house. How will Esperanza adapt to live as poor person, and without her father? How will Esperanza and her mother adapt to the changes? How will they get money to bring Abuelita to them?

Setting: Mexico, early 1900s

Characters:
Esperanza Ortega -
Ramona - Esperanza's mom, strong-willed, smart, kind
Papa - AKA Sixto Ortega
Abuelita - Esperanza's grandmother, knits
Miguel - former servant, used to be Esperanza's best friend until Esperanza made Miguel feel strange about the divide between servant and employer, learned how to take care of the land from his dad and Sixto, huge heart, kind, patient
Alfonso - former servant, Miguel's dad
Hortensia - former servant, Miguel's dad
Josefina - Miguel's aunt
Isabel - Josefina's daughter, goes to school, teaches Esperanza how to take care of the babies
Marta - leader of a strike
Pepe and Lupe - babies
Melina and Irene - girls at the camp who agreed to watch the babies so Esperanza can work

Recurring Themes: racism, greed, power, family, grief, strength, loss, mental health

Controversial Issues: Dad dies in first chapter

Personal Thoughts: This book is beautifully written and is a touching story. I just haven't gotten kids to pick it up. It doesn't read like historical fiction, because many of the same things are probably still happening today.

Genre: historical fiction

Pacing: fast-medium
Characters: very well developed, not too many
Frame:
Storyline:

Activity: ( )

"The author of Amelia and Eleanor Go for a Ride (1999) and Riding Freedom (1997) again approaches historical fiction, this time using her own grandmother as source material. In 1930, Esperanza lives a privileged life on a ranch in Aguascalientes, Mexico. But when her father dies, the post-Revolutionary culture and politics force her to leave with her mother for California. Now they are indebted to the family who previously worked for them, for securing them work on a farm in the San Joaquin valley. Esperanza balks at her new situation, but eventually becomes as accustomed to it as she was in her previous home, and comes to realize that she is still relatively privileged to be on a year-round farm with a strong community. She sees migrant workers forced from their jobs by families arriving from the Dust Bowl, and camps of strikers—many of them US citizens—deported in the “voluntary repatriation” that sent at least 450,000 Mexicans and Mexican-Americans back to Mexico in the early 1930s. Ryan’s narrative has an epic tone, characters that develop little and predictably, and a romantic patina that often undercuts the harshness of her story. But her style is engaging, her characters appealing, and her story is one that—though a deep-rooted part of the history of California, the Depression, and thus the nation—is little heard in children’s fiction. It bears telling to a wider audience. (author’s note) (Fiction. 9-15)" www.kirkusreviews.com

This book is appropriate for children in fourth grade and up. This book has won the Pura Belpré Award for Writing and Jane Addams Children's Book Awards for Book for Older Children.

Reading Level: 3rd-8th grades
Awards: Jane Addams Children's Book Awards for Book for Older Children (2001), Pura Belpré Award for Writing (2002)

independent Reading level- Grade 3+
Awards:
Pura Belpre Award (2002)
Jane Addams Children's Book Award (2001)