Alice Cary

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

The Line Tender

Review by Alice Cary

Kate Allen’s noteworthy debut novel, The Line Tender, is a big-hearted story about friendship, grief and recovery set in the 1990s. Twelve-year-old Lucy Everhart’s summer is off to an exciting start when a fisherman in her town of Rockport, Massachusetts, catches a great white shark. Lucy and her best friend and neighbor Fred are overjoyed because they’re working on a field guide of local animals for their science project, with Lucy illustrating and Fred providing scientific data of specimens they encounter, and this will be an exciting entry. But the great white stirs up memories of Lucy’s mother, a shark expert who died of an aneurysm five years ago.

Unfortunately, another tragedy strikes and kills another loved one, and Lucy and her father, a diver for the police department, are left to piece their lives together once again. Allen seamlessly weaves in intriguing facts about marine biology throughout this story, and her narration is strikingly authentic and subtly nuanced, whether she’s describing a joyful afternoon trip into Harvard Square or the painful moments when Lucy’s grief is so all-consuming that she can’t eat for fear of choking.

Lucy’s heartache does help lead her back to her mother, “whom everyone seemed to know better” than she did. She becomes engrossed in a research proposal her mother wrote just before her death to tag and study great white sharks, whose numbers seem to be increasing off the New England coast. 

A grieving Lucy is buoyed by a cast of helpful adults, including her father, a kind neighbor, her science teacher, a guidance counselor, and a number of researchers who worked with her mother, including one who says, “All life is interconnected. If one species moves away or becomes extinct, the order shifts.” Numerous middle grade books deal with grief, but few do it so beautifully―and hopefully―as The Line Tender.

Numerous middle grade books deal with grief, but few do it so beautifully―and hopefully―as The Line Tender.

NonfictionTrue Crime

The Last Stone

Review by Alice Cary

For 38 years, an unimaginable crime remained a complete mystery: On March 29, 1975, Katherine and Sheila Lyon, ages 10 and 12, disappeared from a shopping plaza in Wheaton, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C. The sisters were never seen again. 

Fast forward to 2013, when Chris Homrock, the last remaining investigator of a cold case squad, turned his attention to a six-page transcript from April 1, 1975: the testimony of Lloyd Welch, who as a teenager claimed to have seen a man lead the Lyon girls out of the mall. 

What unfolded next is the subject of Mark Bowden’s mesmerizing The Last Stone. The bestselling author of Black Hawk Down had been haunted by the girls’ disappearance ever since reporting on it as a 23-year-old for the Baltimore News American. Relying on videos and transcripts, Bowden takes readers ringside as Homrock and three other savvy investigators spend 10 long interview sessions trying to squeeze as much of the slippery truth as possible out of Welch, a compulsive liar finishing up a prison sentence in Delaware for sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl. Words pour out of Welch’s mouth like a poisonous water fountain, his ever-changing statements about his involvement with the Lyon sisters always framed to make himself seem as innocent as possible. 

Like any true crime book, especially one involving children, this isn’t for the faint of heart, but rest assured, it’s an in-depth master study of criminal psychology and interrogation. As one investigator explained, “We knew we were dealing with a monster, but we had to entertain him in a fashion. . . . We had to endure the ‘friendship’ and go through the crap to get as many of the answers as we could.”

In the tradition of the “Making a Murderer” Netflix series and the “Serial” podcast, The Last Stone will leave readers on the edge of their seats as a group of indefatigable detectives tries to unearth the carefully concealed, unspeakable truths behind a decades-old tragedy. 

A group of indefatigable detectives tries to unearth the carefully concealed, unspeakable truths behind a decades-old tragedy.

FictionLiterary Fiction

The Other Americans

Review by Alice Cary

When Driss Guerraoui, the owner of a diner near Joshua Tree National Park, leaves his restaurant one night, he’s killed in a mysterious hit-and-run while crossing the street. But this wasn’t an accident; it was murder, concludes his daughter Nora, as a variety of surprising details about her father’s life emerge. He was, after all, feuding with Anderson Baker, the owner of the bowling alley next door.

As aspiring composer Nora returns to her hometown to help run the family diner and grieve with her mother and sister, she encounters a variety of ghosts from her childhood, including Baker’s son, A.J., who in high school wrote “raghead” on her locker, bullying her because her parents emigrated from Morocco out of fear of political unrest.

Moroccan-born Laila Lalami was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for The Moor’s Account, and her much-anticipated fourth book, The Other Americans, doesn’t disappoint. The story carefully unfolds from multiple viewpoints, including that of Nora’s immigrant mother, Maryam; her jealous and seemingly highly successful sister, Salma; and even her dead father. There’s also Detective Coleman, an African-American woman investigating the case, as well as a Mexican immigrant who witnessed Driss’ death and remains haunted by his ghost but is afraid to come forward and risk deportation. Nora also reconnects with her high school friend Jeremy, now an Iraq War veteran and sheriff’s deputy.

Lalami’s crisp, straightforward prose offers the perfect counterpoint to the complexity of her plot, which artfully interweaves past and present. Reminiscent of Ann Patchett’s Commonwealth in its depiction of the enduring effects of family secrets and betrayals, The Other Americans also addresses a multitude of other issues—immigration, prejudice, post-traumatic stress, love and murder—with what can only be described as magical finesse.

When Driss Guerraoui, the owner of a diner near Joshua Tree National Park, leaves his restaurant one night, he’s killed in a mysterious hit-and-run while crossing the street. But this wasn’t an accident; it was murder, concludes his daughter Nora, as a variety of surprising details about her father’s life emerge. He was, after all, feuding with Anderson Baker, the owner of the bowling alley next door.

Children's & YAPicture Book

Perfect

Review by Alice Cary

A pencil and an eraser―could there be a more perfect pair?

But in author and illustrator Max Amato’s raucously fun debut picture book, Perfect, an epic battle ensues between a rectangular pink eraser and a bright yellow pencil. Eraser throws down the gauntlet on the very first page, making it clear he likes things “perfectly clean,”  with absolutely no squiggles or smudges. He basks amidst a spread of stark white pages, smugly stating, “No pencil can mess with me.” Eraser has met his match, however, as Pencil promptly taunts Eraser by drawing a goofy but spot-on caricature. Then the chase is on, where Amato fills the pages with drawings, smudges and glorious scatterings of eraser crumbs.

With spare text and simple but memorable illustrations, Amato has created an imaginative tale about what can happen when opposites collide. Using a combination of photographs and hand-drawn images, he effectively anthropomorphizes Pencil and Eraser, making great use of Pencil’s cavalcade of marks and Eraser’s endless attempts at cleanup. The faces of these warriors convey a full range of emotion―especially that of indomitable Eraser, who becomes awash in fury and chagrin when he finds himself lost in a forest of trees drawn by Pencil that soon turn the book’s pages into a smothering sea of black.

In the end, Eraser finds an ingenious way to escape Pencil’s endless sea of pencil marks. But when all is said and done, Eraser ultimately realizes he misses Pencil, and a friendship is born. Yes, these two may drive each other bananas, but Eraser concludes that a perfectly clean page without any challenge turns out to be boring and lonely.

Full of an abundance of heart, non-stop action and delightfully clever illustrations, Perfect is sure to be a beloved hit.

In author and illustrator Max Amato’s raucously fun debut picture book, Perfect, an epic battle ensues between a rectangular pink eraser and a bright yellow pencil.

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Right as Rain

Review by Alice Cary

In author Lindsey Stoddard’s brimming-with-life novel, Right as Rain, white sixth-grader Rain Andrews’ mother is a neuroscientist who studies the brain, but she can’t fix her family’s broken hearts after Rain’s beloved older brother, Guthrie, is killed in a car accident. Stoddard tackles grief head-on in her moving, uplifting portrayal of learning to live and embrace life amid loss.

Determined to make a fresh start, Rain’s mom takes a new research job at Columbia University, moving the family to an apartment in Hamilton Heights and leaving behind virtually all of their belongings in the Vermont town that Rain adores. Rain’s grief-stricken dad is seriously depressed and stays in bed for much of the day, while Rain feels responsible for Guthrie’s death because she helped him sneak out of the house on that fateful night―the details of which are gradually revealed in short chapters intertwined with the main narrative. But Rain’s dad, who works in construction, has taught her that “If you take down a weight-bearing wall without setting up a system of support beams, the whole weight of the house will collapse down on you. But if you build up a strong system of support beams, you can take the weight right off.”

While Stoddard set her equally sensitive first novel, Just Like Jackie, in a small Vermont town, she excels at portraying the rich diversity of Rain’s new Latinx neighborhood, where she realizes that “even though my skin doesn’t match any skin here . . . I’m not sticking out.” Rain’s teacher is quietly understanding, and she befriends Nestor, a homeless man. She also finds support at Ms. Dacie’s place, an afterschool program that welcomes all. Rain’s main salvation is running, and before long, she becomes part of a championship relay team that brings new friendships with Amelia, who has a stutter; Ana, who has lived in poverty; and her Dominican neighbor, Frankie.

Stoddard has woven a rich cityscape and plot, and while a few threads feel a bit predictable, she doesn’t settle for easy answers as Rain and her family navigate the complexities of rebuilding a life in the midst of grief. 

In author Lindsey Stoddard’s brimming-with-life novel, Right as Rain, white sixth-grader Rain Andrews’ mother is a neuroscientist who studies the brain, but she can’t fix her family’s broken hearts after Rain’s beloved older brother, Guthrie, is killed in a car accident. Stoddard tackles grief head-on in her moving, uplifting portrayal of learning to live and embrace life amid loss.

NonfictionTrue Crime

The Trial of Lizzie Borden

Review by Alice Cary

More than 125 years later, the question remains: Did Lizzie Borden murder her father and stepmother in their Fall River, Massachusetts, home on a quiet summer day in 1892? This perennially perplexing case began to intrigue Cara Robertson during her student years at Harvard and later became the subject of her senior thesis. Now, decades later, Robertson is an accomplished lawyer who has used her legal skills and research savvy to recount the crime, arrest, trial and its aftermath in the highly readable The Trial of Lizzie Borden.

Relying solely on evidence, never speculation, Robertson is an adept, fair-minded guide with a gift for organization and nuance. Seventy-two photos help bring the gruesomeness to life—including photos of the dead bodies and their shattered skulls, presented as evidence in the trial. The murders are haunting for their seeming impossibility and brutality (though there weren’t 40 whacks, as the childhood rhyme suggests―Borden’s father suffered 10 blows to his face, while her stepmother died of 18 head wounds). How such vicious attacks happened with no one noticing is bedeviling; no suspects emerged besides Borden, an elegantly dressed 32-year-old church volunteer who remained remarkably composed during the wildly publicized trial, reading the works of Charles Dickens and Sir Walter Scott in her jail cell.

Readers will feel as though they’re part of the investigation and trial, which drew hundreds of gawkers vying for seats inside the drama-filled courthouse. Robertson describes many astonishing moments, such as when the medical examiner set down the skull of Andrew Borden and “the old man’s jaw sagged back and forth in a grisly suggestion of speech.” One journalist wrote, “Was he trying to testify?” If only that were the case!

This murderous tale has inspired numerous books (such as See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt), movies, a ballet and an opera. The Trial of Lizzie Borden is a welcome addition to the lore, the perfect starting point for modern-day readers to launch their own inquiries.

More than 125 years later, the question remains: Did Lizzie Borden murder her father and stepmother in their Fall River, Massachusetts, home on a quiet summer day in 1892? This perennially perplexing case began to intrigue Cara Robertson during her student years at Harvard and later became the subject of her senior thesis. Now, decades later, Robertson is an accomplished lawyer who has used her legal skills and research savvy to recount the crime, arrest, trial and its aftermath in the highly readable The Trial of Lizzie Borden.

NonfictionBiography

The Lady from the Black Lagoon

Review by Alice Cary

When horror superfan and film producer Mallory O’Meara watched The Creature from the Black Lagoon at age 17, her life changed forever. She found a lifelong heroine when she discovered that the movie’s titular creature had been created by a female artist named Milicent Patrick. “For all of my adult life and film career, Milicent Patrick has been a guiding light, a silent friend, a beacon reminding me that I belonged,” O’Meara writes.

Patrick was a footnote long lost to film history, but O’Meara has decided to change all that with her fascinating biography, The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick. Patrick’s story is enthralling: She spent part of her childhood on the grounds of Hearst Castle, where her megalomaniac father was an architect. A talented artist, she became one of Disney’s first animators and, later, the only woman to create a classic Hollywood monster―only to be fired because her boss was jealous of the attention she was receiving. Nonetheless, her legacy continues to inspire, as her creature was the impetus behind the Oscar-winning film The Shape of Water. Patrick was also an actress (albeit not a great one) and a glamorous personality who embodied the allure of Hollywood.

Those details alone would be enough to make this an interesting read, but O’Meara adds her own unique narrative voice, including 177 fact-filled, endlessly funny footnotes. This is a book that O’Meara was born to write, and she seamlessly meshes her own life story with that of her heroine in a way similar to how Julie Powell paid tribute to Julia Child in Julie and Julia. Although O’Meara quickly discovered that her quest to learn more about Patrick was “a researcher’s nightmare,” she makes the journey unforgettable.

“Uncovering her life over the past two years,” O’Meara writes, “has helped me see the things I need to do to protect more women from her fate. It’s helped me be brave, be strong and be loud.”

Even if you’re not a fan of horror films, The Lady from the Black Lagoon is a riveting, sincere Hollywood saga that will quickly win your heart.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Mallory O’Meara for The Lady from the Black Lagoon.

When horror superfan and film producer Mallory O’Meara watched The Creature from the Black Lagoon at age 17, her life changed forever. She found a lifelong heroine when she discovered that the movie’s titular creature had been created by a female artist named Milicent Patrick. “For all of my adult life and film career, Milicent Patrick has been a guiding light, a silent friend, a beacon reminding me that I belonged,” O’Meara writes.

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

How High the Moon

Review by Alice Cary

“Don’t you let how nobody treats you in this world make you think that you ain’t worthy,” 12-year-old Henry’s grandfather tells him. It’s one of the many valuable lessons waiting to be discovered in Karyn Parson’s absorbing middle grade debut, How High the Moon, about a trio of African-American cousins trying to find their place in Alcolu, South Carolina, amid the turmoil of 1944 America and the Jim Crow South. Henry, 11-year-old Ella and 14-year-old Myrna all live with their Poppy and Granny. The standout narrator here is biracial Ella, who yearns to know her father’s identity and worries about the colorism she experiences as a result of her light skin tone. Ella soon joins her mother in Boston, where she’s working in the Naval Yard as a shipfitter while trying to make it as a jazz singer. Ella is excited by the prospect of living with her mom, and she’s eager because “Up there, colored folks could go anywhere they wanted.”

Parsons sensitively tackles important issues by weaving in real historical figures and details throughout this story. For example, Myrna has a crush on George Stinney, the 14-year-old African-American boy who was executed in Alcolu after being wrongfully convicted in the murder of two young white girls.

You may recognize Parsons as the actress who portrayed Hilary Banks opposite Will Smith on the 1990s sitcom “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” but with How High the Moon, she proves her talent as an author, adroitly packing plenty of plot, characterization and feeling into this story. Begging worthy comparisons to One Crazy Summer and Brown Girl Dreaming, How High the Moon heralds an exciting new voice in historical fiction for young readers.

A trio of African-American cousins try to find their place in Alcolu, South Carolina, amid the turmoil of 1944 America and the Jim Crow South.
Mystery & SuspenseMystery

As Long as We Both Shall Live

Review by Alice Cary

Grab a towel—although it’s early in the year, JoAnn Chaney’s As Long as We Both Shall Live is the perfect beach read, a multiple-murder and suspense saga that will keep readers engrossed and guessing.

Two women are killed, one in 1995, the other in 2018, both wives of successful salesman Matt Evans. The second incident is a literal cliffhanger: Matt and his second wife, Marie, are hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park when she falls off a steep cliff into a raging river below.

Detectives Marion Spengler and Ralph Loren doubt the double tragedies are coincidences, although Loren, who appeared in Chaney’s first novel, What You Don’t Know, is bedeviled by his own demons, including a former partner who mysteriously disappeared and whose remains have recently been unearthed. Half-Korean and-half American young mother Spengler is a likable, determined sleuth likely to appear in future novels.

Chaney continues to explore dark themes with her quick but effective character studies and zippy prose. The Colorado-based author is particularly adept at juggling multiple narrators and plot lines, revealing a multitude of tantalizing thoughts and actions while keeping the suspense as high as those Rocky Mountains. Chaney adds to the intrigue a host of song references, calling the novel’s first two sections “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and “Mama, Just Killed a Man.” Appropriately, the title of the book must be a nod to the Deicide death metal song, “Not as Long as We Both Shall Live.”

As one detective tells naturally suspicious Spengler, “You shouldn’t take anyone at face value.” And neither should readers of As Long as We Both Shall Live. Movie rights have already been snatched up by producer Bruna Papandrea, whose projects include Gone Girl, “Big Little Lies” and The Nightingale.

Grab a towel—although it’s early in the year, JoAnn Chaney’s As Long as We Both Shall Live is the perfect beach read, a multiple-murder and suspense saga that will keep readers engrossed and guessing.

NonfictionMemoir

Maid

Review by Alice Cary

“My daughter learned to walk in a homeless shelter,” writes Stephanie Land in the opening line of her insightful, moving memoir, Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive. Land was planning on attending college and becoming a writer when she became pregnant with her daughter, Mia. After her short relationship with the baby’s father became abusive, Land found herself a single mother with virtually no support network. She depended on food stamps, childcare assistance, part-time work as a housecleaner and occasional charity from friends. When she took her first housecleaning job, she quickly realized, “They don’t pay me enough for this.”

Nonetheless, she persevered, despite the fact that black mold in her studio apartment repeatedly sickened both Mia and herself. “Poverty was like a stagnant pond of mud that pulled at our feet and refused to let go.” Land learns to appreciate what little she has while observing the lives within the homes she cleans, giving them nicknames like the Loving House, the Cat Lady’s House and the Porn House. She realizes that despite her clients’ relative wealth, “they did not seem to enjoy life any more than I did.”

Like Tara Westover in Educated, Land sees education as her salvation. Determined to break free from sickness, poverty and bad luck, she uses a combination of grants, loans and jump-off-the-cliff risk to ultimately pursue her dream of studying creative writing at the University of Montana. 

While books like Matthew Desmond’s Evicted, Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed and Alissa Quart’s Squeezed present heart-wrenching overviews of poverty in America, Land combines her raw, authentic voice and superb storytelling skills to create a firsthand account from the trenches. Readers will be left wanting to hear more from this talented new voice, and no doubt, she’s got more stories to tell.

 

This article was originally published in the February 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

After Stephanie Land’s short relationship with her baby’s father became abusive, Land found herself a single mother with virtually no support network. She depended on food stamps, childcare assistance, part-time work as a housecleaner and occasional charity from friends. When she took her first housecleaning job, she quickly realized, “They don’t pay me enough for this.”

NonfictionMemoir

The Unwinding Miracle

Review by Alice Cary

BookPage Top Pick in Nonfiction, starred review, January 2019

Julie Yip-Williams always sensed that she was living on borrowed time. After she was born blind with cataracts in 1976 in Vietnam, her grandmother ordered her parents to take her to an herbalist to procure poison that would end Yip-Williams’ life. Thankfully, the herbalist refused. Yip-Williams went on to live an extraordinary life until she died of colon cancer at age 42 on March 19, 2018. Her book, The Unwinding of the Miracle: A Memoir of Life, Death, and Everything That Comes After, is equally exceptional.

After immigrating to America as a child, Yip-Williams underwent surgery that restored partial sight. She later graduated from Harvard Law School, traveled the world alone, married, had two daughters and worked at a prestigious New York City law firm, only to be diagnosed with Stage IV cancer in 2013. Her exquisite, honest memoir about living with and dying of cancer is equal parts practical and philosophical.

Yip-Williams writes unflinchingly of learning to move forward with the disease. “Life can and does go on after an appalling diagnosis, even an incurable one,” she writes. She never sugarcoats, however. She purposefully aims “to depict the dark side of cancer and debunk the overly sweet, pink-ribbon facade of positivity and fanciful hope and rah-rah-rah nonsense spewed by cancer patients and others, which I have come to absolutely loathe.” She plans her death carefully, just as she planned her life, teaching her children not to be afraid, that death is part of life. In the last chapter she writes, “I have lived even as I am dying, and therein lies a certain beauty and wonder.”

Full of love, humor, insight and tragedy, her book resonates with wisdom. As her husband so aptly notes, “For the little girl born blind, she saw more clearly than any of us.”

 

This article was originally published in the January 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Julie Yip-Williams always sensed that she was living on borrowed time. After she was born blind with cataracts in 1976 in Vietnam, her grandmother ordered her parents to take her to an herbalist to procure poison that would end Yip-Williams’ life. Thankfully, the herbalist refused. Yip-Williams went on to live an extraordinary life until she died of colon cancer at age 42 on March 19, 2018. Her book, The Unwinding of the Miracle: A Memoir of Life, Death, and Everything That Comes After, is equally exceptional.

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Rock What Ya Got

Review by Alice Cary

“Once upon a blank piece of paper, where anything could happen” begins Samantha Berger’s rollicking meditation on self-esteem, Rock What Ya Got. Soon after an artist picks up a pencil and begins to draw, a lively, jubilant girl named Viva with a mop of frizzy hair appears on the page. When the artist―not quite satisfied with her creation―decides to erase and start over, defiant Viva grabs the pencil and announces, “Excuse me, Lady Artist, ma’am, but I like me the way I am.”

Thus begins a spirited back-and-forth between the illustrator and her subject, as the artist tries to adjust various things: first Viva’s hair, then her body and finally the background of the pages. Illustrations by Kerascoët (a pseudonym for a French husband-and-wife art team) energize this artistic spat, showing humorous alternative versions of Viva as a princess, ballerina, weightlifter, gymnast and mermaid. Meanwhile, Viva advocates for her original self, saying, “Be your best you and rock what ya got. Don’t let anyone say what you’re not.”

Observant readers will notice striking similarities between Viva and the artist, who finally realizes that Viva’s message, “Rock What Ya Got,” is something she wrote long ago as a child―and something she must never again forget.

Berger, whose many books include Crankenstein and Martha Doesn’t Say Sorry, delivers a vital message in a lighthearted way. This creative contemplation about both the artistic process and one’s sense of self-worth packs the perfect visceral and visual punch for young readers.

Children will learn to love their features in Samantha Berger's rollicking meditation on self-esteem, Rock What Ya Got.
Children's & YAPicture Book

Carmela Full of Wishes

Review by Alice Cary

Matt de la Peña and Christian Robinson earned (respectively) a Newbery Medal and a Caldecott Honor for Last Stop on Market Street, and now they’re at it again with another potential award winner, Carmela Full of Wishes. On the surface, their latest collaboration is a simple story about a spunky Mexican-American girl and her older brother, but like its predecessor, it packs a powerful literary, visual and social punch without ever once being preachy.

It’s Carmela’s birthday, which means she’s finally old enough to accompany her brother to the laundromat, much to his ongoing chagrin. Carmela excitedly tags along down Freedom Boulevard, past the bus stop, a repair shop and a store where her father used to linger, hoping for work. When Carmela picks a dandelion growing in a sidewalk crack, she contemplates a variety of wishes, imagining her mother sleeping in one of the fancy hotel rooms that she cleans, or her father “getting his papers fixed so he could finally be home.”

The story’s finest points are sublimely subtle with layers of meaning, as when Carmela’s brother asks her why she’s so annoying, and she shoots back, “It’s a free country.” Illustrator Robinson marvelously envisions Carmela’s many wishes as papel picado (Mexican folk art), and his vibrant acrylic and collage illustrations pay homage to Ezra Jack Keats.

Carmela Full of Wishes is a big-hearted story about the hope, joy and love that hold struggling families together amid weighty, adult-size obstacles.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Matt de la Peña and Christian Robinson earned (respectively) a Newbery Medal and a Caldecott Honor for Last Stop on Market Street, and now they’re at it again with another potential award winner, Carmela Full of Wishes. On the surface, their latest collaboration is a simple story about a spunky Mexican-American girl and her older brother, but like its predecessor, it packs a powerful literary, visual and social punch without ever once being preachy.

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