By the author of 2021 Pura Belpré Honor Book The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez, a sweeping, emotional middle grade historical novel about a twelve-year-old boy who leaves his family in Cuba to immigrate to the U.S. by himself, based on the author's family history. “I don’t remember. Tell me everything, Pepito. Tell me about Cuba.” When the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 solidifies Castro’s power in Cuba, twelve-year-old Cumba’s family makes the difficult decision to send him to Florida alone. Faced with the prospect of living in another country by himself, Cumba tries to remember the sound of his father’s clarinet, the smell of his mother’s lavender perfume. Life in the United States presents a whole new set of challenges. Lost in a sea of English speakers, Cumba has to navigate a new city, a new school, and new freedom all on his own. With each day, Cumba feels more confident in his new surroundings, but he continues to wonder: Will his family ever be whole again? Or will they remain just out of reach, ninety miles across the sea? A Kirkus Best Children's Book of the Year "...Cuevas’ latest is a triumph of the heart...A compassionate, emotionally astute portrait of a young Cuban in exile." —Kirkus, STARRED REVIEW "Cuevas’ intense and immersive account of a Cuban boy’s experience after the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion brings a specific point in history alive." —Booklist, STARRED REVIEW "Cuevas packs this sophomore novel with palpable emotions and themes of friendship, love, longing, and trauma, attentively conveying tumultuous historical events from the lens of one young refugee." — Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW

2021 Pura Belpré Honor Book NYPL Best Book of 2020 2020 Evanston Public Library Great Books for Kids In this magical middle-grade debut novel from Adrianna Cuevas, The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez, a Cuban American boy must use his secret ability to communicate with animals to save the inhabitants of his town when they are threatened by a tule vieja, a witch that transforms into animals. All Nestor Lopez wants is to live in one place for more than a few months and have dinner with his dad. When he and his mother move to a new town to live with his grandmother after his dad’s latest deployment, Nestor plans to lay low. He definitely doesn’t want to anyone find out his deepest secret: that he can talk to animals. But when the animals in his new town start disappearing, Nestor's grandmother becomes the prime suspect after she is spotted in the woods where they were last seen. As Nestor investigates the source of the disappearances, he learns that they are being seized by a tule vieja—a witch who can absorb an animal’s powers by biting it during a solar eclipse. And the next eclipse is just around the corner... Now it’s up to Nestor’s extraordinary ability and his new friends to catch the tule vieja—and save a place he might just call home.

A “darkly hilarious” (Elle) novel about a fictionalized Fidel Castro and an octogenarian Cuban exile obsessed with seeking revenge by the National Book Award finalist Cristina García, this “clever, well-conceived dual portrait shows what connects and divides Cubans inside and outside of the island” (Kirkus Reviews). Vivid and teeming with life, King of Cuba transports readers to Cuba and Miami, and into the heads of two larger-than-life men: a fictionalized Fidel Castro and an octogenarian Cuban exile obsessed with seeking revenge against the dictator. García’s masterful twinning of these characters combines with a rabble of other Cuban voices to portray the passions and realities of two Cubas—on the island and off— in a pulsating story that entertains and illuminates.

“Impressive . . . [Cristina García’s] story is about three generations of Cuban women and their separate responses to the revolution. Her special feat is to tell it in a style as warm and gentle as the ‘sustaining aromas of vanilla and almond,’ as rhythmic as the music of Beny Moré.”—Time Cristina García’s acclaimed book is the haunting, bittersweet story of a family experiencing a country’s revolution and the revelations that follow. The lives of Celia del Pino and her husband, daughters, and grandchildren mirror the magical realism of Cuba itself, a landscape of beauty and poverty, idealism and corruption. Dreaming in Cuban is “a work that possesses both the intimacy of a Chekov story and the hallucinatory magic of a novel by Gabriel García Márquez” (The New York Times). In celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the novel’s original publication, this edition features a new introduction by the author. Praise for Dreaming in Cuban “Remarkable . . . an intricate weaving of dramatic events with the supernatural and the cosmic . . . evocative and lush.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Captures the pain, the distance, the frustrations and the dreams of these family dramas with a vivid, poetic prose.”—The Washington Post “Brilliant . . . With tremendous skill, passion and humor, García just may have written the definitive story of Cuban exiles and some of those they left behind.”—The Denver Post

Pura Belpré Award Winner Ruth Behar's inspiring story of a Jewish girl who escapes Poland to make a new life in Cuba, where she works to rescue the rest of her family The situation is getting dire for Jews in Poland on the eve of World War II. Esther's father has fled to Cuba, and she is the first one to join him. It's heartbreaking to be separated from her beloved sister, so Esther promises to write down everything that happens until they're reunited. And she does, recording both the good--the kindness of the Cuban people and her discovery of a valuable hidden talent--and the bad: the fact that Nazism has found a foothold even in Cuba. Esther's evocative letters are full of her appreciation for life and reveal a resourceful, determined girl with a rare ability to bring people together, all the while striving to get the rest of their family out of Poland before it's too late. Based on Ruth Behar's family history, this compelling story celebrates the resilience of the human spirit in the most challenging times.

Richard (Tai) Grove, known as Ricardo by his Cuban friends has never been satisfied to be a mere tourist in that island nation. In establishing the Canada Cuba Literary Alliance, (more often referred to as the CCLA), he committed himself to beginning and sustaining a conversation between writers and poets in Cuba and those fortunate Canadians who have come to share in this conversation. Read these poems. Join Ricardo on his journey. Fall in love with Cuba. Carry a piece of Cuba's blue sky in your pocket. Like the Scot kirking the tartan, touch the blue, the stunning blue, the radiant blue, pull it from your pocket and let it shine as the pages of this book shine and are a force for good in the world. - John B. Lee, Author of 70 titles,Three time Poet Laureate

From the age of eleven, Dr. Secundino Rubio knew that he wanted to become a physician. Industrious from the age of six years, he allowed nothing to stand in the way of his dreams. He succeeded, and his life with his wife and young children on the beautiful island of Cuba was all any man could desire until Fidel Castro and his band of guerilla soldiers took control. With sheer determination, Dr. Rubio managed to follow his wife and four small children, one only a baby, from Cuba to Florida. Like many other Cubans, he gave up every thing he had worked for to obtain safety and freedom. Dr. Rubio is a man who has always lived according to what he purposes in his heart. "I have never been one to look back," he says. "I have always set my mind to a course and then followed it to the best of my ability." The memoirs of Dr. Secundino Rubio chronicle his life in Cuba, where he lived during the first thirty-nine years of his life. It continues to South Central Illinois, his home for most of the years since he fled Communist Cuba. His is a story of hard work and courage, of extended family devotion, of love and laughter, interrupted by violence, imprisonment and terror. The pages of WITHOUT A QUARTER IN MY POCKET are filled with stories and photographs of real people, some dating back to the nineteenth century. It is a testimony to one man's spirit, faith and belief that he could do what needed to be done, and do it well.