I have written many newspaper articles over the years about migrant workers, the hardships, and the challenges for the children. Migrant has won of the New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book of 2011. Isabelle Arsenault’s illustrations are beautiful and have a sense of humor –even the geese wear prayer caps. Why I like this book: Maxine Trottier has written a very unique and whimsical book about a little girl who wants to live somewhere permanently. Most important, she wonders what it would feel like to be a tree with firmly planted roots so that she could watch the seasons pass and never have to be uprooted when spring and fall arrive. Anna sometimes feels like a jack rabbit without a burrow, a bee and not a worker bee, and a kitten sharing a bed with siblings. Anna wonders what it would be like to stay in one place, to have her own bed, to ride her own bicycle. Her family is a flock of geese beating its way there and back again.” Anna is the daughter of a special group of Mennonite migrants from Mexico that travel to Canada to work in the agricultural fields each spring. It is the birds, after all, that fly north in the spring and south every fall, chasing the sun, following the warmth. Opening/Synopsis: “There are times when Anna feels like a bird. Theme: Migrant workers, Mennonites, Mexico and Canada Groundwood Books, House of Anansi Press, 2011, Fiction
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