This week, I read the books A Crack in the Sea by H.M. Bouwman and Dreamers by Yuyi Morales. Both of these books were about people who were migrating to new places. In A Crack in the Sea, there were many characters who migrated to new places and some were refugees fleeing a country that was riddled with war and violence. In Dreamers, a mom and her child migrate to a new country where they don’t understand the language and have to adapt to living in a new place. In both books, the characters face many challenges in the new places they end up and they all, in their own unique way, were able to overcome those challenges and prosper.
A Crack in the Sea
A Crack in the Sea is a fictitious narrative that tells of a second world where a young boy named Pip can talk to fish and his sister Kinchen tries to protect him. In this second world, there are two types of people, those who live on the island and those who live on Raftworld. The Raft King is desperate to find a doorway back to Africa that will lead him to his adopted mother who abandoned him when he was a little boy. In order to do this, the Raft King kidnaps Pip and takes him away to Raftworld. Desperate to save her brother, Kinchen devises a plan to get him back; however, first she must learn the history behind her people in order to understand the motives of others. That is when we are introduced to Venus and Swimmer, twins with magical powers who save slaves from a boat and happen upon a doorway to the second world. Venus had saved these people and along with her brother Swimmer, they lead their people to safety. Then, we meet Thanh, Sang, Uncle Truc, The Turtle, Mai and Uncle Hung. They were all feeling Vietnam after the Vietnam War. They sail out to sea on a small boat with a few supplies in hope of getting to Malaysia and living at a refugee camp. However, along they way they were faced with challenge after challenge and were starting to worry that they would not make it to land again. That is when a maelstrom started happening in the water and Mai quickly got everyone to hold hands and in the center of the maelstrom was a doorway to the second world. They needed a little help from a sea monster to get all the way through, but once through, Mai was able to walk on water along with her friends and family. Off they went to find land.
I will not tell you any more, because I think that you should go read this book to find out the rest of what happens and the parts that come after they enter the second world, are my favorite parts of the book. This is a powerful book that is about family and redefining what it means to be a family and accepting/encouraging the differences of others. In the second world, there were a select few people who had magical powers and those people who were different, were celebrated and encouraged to use their powers by most of the people. Then, when the people who were walking on the water, the group who was with Thanh, got to the Raftworld, everyone was very accepting of them and willing to help them out. These were people who looked different and they had never seen before, but when they saw them, they immediately got to work bringing them food and tending to the injured.
This is a book that has a lot of subtle messages about being a good person and making good decision that I think a reader could learn a lot from, without the author directly telling people to be nice to those who may be different. The author creates a feeling of empathy in the reader towards the different characters in the book, there were many of times where I just wanted to help out Thahn and the people on the boat with him, or talk to the Raft King and help him to analyze his decisions better. I could see this book being read with a middle school class and introduce them into the idea of migrants and refugees and how this book may relate to what we are seeing about immigrant and refugees today. I feel like this book could help students to be more empathetic towards those individuals who are refugees or immigrants and could help them to understand their journeys and challenges.
In this text, many characters had the power to make choices for a better world. The Raft King had power in his position as king to decide that he was going to try and take his people to Africa. Uncle Truc had the power to decide to leave and bring Sang and Thahn with him. However, I think that Pip had a lot of power in this book that he grew into overtime, the more independent he became. Through his magical power of talking with the fish and through the confidence that Jupiter had in him, he was able to use what he knew and help to open the Raft Kings eyes about his people and the choices they have. Not only did Pip have the power to change the King’s mind, but he also had the power to talk to the monster who was holding the doorway open and he was able to help her get back to her husband. I think that Jupiter said it best on page 227 in the book, “The king only rules because the people let him. That’s how this works.” In that quote, Jupiter was referring to the king; however, I think it could also be used to talk about Pip as well. The people believed in Pip and trusted Pip and that gave him power to help all the characters in the story. They all trusted him and in return, he helped them to finish their own journeys.
I really liked how the author included fantasy and history together in this book. There were parts that were made up and were very created, but with the inclusion of historical facts it almost made the story feel as if it was real and actually happened. When reading about Thahn and Sang on the boat, I forgot that I was reading a book where people had magical powers. I imagined them as real people who were trying to escape a war riddled Vietnam in 1978. The author wrote with a sense of knowledge and facts that I imagined for a while that these were real people who were facing real struggles. However, I do not think that it was entirely fiction, reading that section and the section about Venus and Swimmer on the boat, it reminded me a lot about Carina Hoang in her Tedx talk about how being a refugee is not a choice. Some of the experiences that Hoang faced on the boat her and her siblings took reminded me a lot of the experiences Thahn and Venus had on their different journeys. The author did a great job expressing their feelings and emotions and using elements of what refugees go through while on their journeys in relation to the characters in this book. That is why I think that at times I forgot that this was a book about fiction and was not a story of what actually happened to someone. The realness of this fictitious book is a very powerful tool that I feel the author employs very well to help the reader feel more empathetic to the characters.
Dreamers
This book is about a mother and her child who immigrated to a new country where they did not understand very much at all. The mother and the child made lots of mistakes and were afraid to speak in this new place. They were travelers in this new place and walked around a lot in their new land, until they reach a library, a place they had not seen before. In this new place, they learned to read, and the mother said, “Books became our language. Books became our home. Books became our lives.” She continues on to say that one day they will become something we haven’t imagined and that they are the dreamers of the world.
In this book, Morales is an Own Voices author. Morales and her son entered into America in 1994 to visit her son’s great-grandfather who was ill and to marry her sons’ father. Once in America, everything was strange and unfamiliar, and because of immigration she was now required to stay in the United States. Much like the character in the book, Morales visited a library and fell in love. To her the books were beautiful and in picture books although she could not read the words, she could read the pictures and understand the story. She explained that her and her son were Dreamers because they were carried by hopes and dreams and gifts in order to build a better future, much like most immigrants. Her story reflects the story of the girl in the book. She does not outright say that the character in the book is her, in her authors note, it is likely that the girl in the story is a representation of her and her son as they immigrated to the United States.
To me, a big theme that I got from this book is change and growing in who you are. The idea of change is evident when the character goes into the new country and she does not understand anything. Everything is so different to her, the words, the ways of the peoples, etc. She had to learn how to adapt to this change and try and make sense of the world around her. That happened when she went to the library and learned from the books there. It just goes to show what the power of a good book can have on someone. The author loved them so much that she became and author and an illustrator herself of one of the most beautifully illustrated books I have seen. I got a sense of growing in who you are through their journey after visiting the library. Through looking at the books, she was able to grow in this new place and understand the language and feel like she belonged. Morales ended the story by saying, “We are stories. We are two languages. We are lucha. We are resilience. We are hope.” The characters grew into this new life and country to which they now belong and showed how they could stay strong even in the face of struggle and learn to appreciate who they are.
Overall, this is an amazing book. The illustrations are intricate and eye-catching. The story is beautiful and well written. However, I think one of my favorite aspects of this book is Morales’ dedication. It says, “To Dreamers of all kinds, especially those who have brought their abundant gifts to a new land – you are the inspiration for this book.” I love that this is who she dedicated her book to, and it opened my eyes to something that I had not thought of before. Obviously, immigrants and refugees have talents and are skilled, but I never hear about how they bring their skills and talents into the United States. Morales, brought her skills in writing and drawing into the United States and now we have beautiful and strong books that we can share with our students, but what about all the other people who may immigrate to the United States who have gifts and skills that we do not hear about because in the news and media, immigrants are almost always portrayed negatively. I think that it would be awesome to have students conduct research on immigrants who have had a powerful impact in the United States in recent years. Not only would that be an invaluable learning experience to see how immigrants are impacting our country positively, but it would also help students to further build empathy towards those individuals who are immigrants and hold them in higher regard than what is just portrayed in the news.
One thing about the illustrations that I loved is the things that she carried with her. On a lot of the pages, were see these aspects in the images, one is a skeleton, one is a heard with and eye on it, and the other one looks almost like a dog. The feature that almost looks like a dog reminds me of the movie Coco. In that movie, he has a dog that follows him around that is his spirit guide. That makes me think of this animal that looks like a dog in her book, like it is her spirit guide helping her along the way into finding her passion and pushing her towards what she is meant to do. I could not find information from the author about these features in her images when looking online, but I like thinking of them as spirit guides watching out for her and her son as they figure out and grow in this new place. I was able to find a video of Morales talking about some symbolism she uses in the book which can be seen in the video below. Her reasoning behind including different elements on each page is really interesting and adds so much more to the book and the power/meaning behind it.
More about the author:
Home
A powerful power that a teacher may want to use when reading these books in class is Home by Warsan Shire. The video of this poem is linked below. This poem can be another way to create empathy and understanding in students towards immigrants and refugees who are people who are typically treated poorly and are looked at negatively from a lot of people. It is a powerful poem that helps one to better understand someone who is a refugee and the hardships they face.
Sources:
Bouwman, H.M. (2017). A Crack in the Sea. New York: Puffin Books.
Morales, Y. (2018). Dreamers. China: Holiday House Publishing, INC.
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