Wild Book, The by Margarita Engle

The Wild Book by Margarita Engle
Harcourt Children's Books
144 pg.

In early twentieth-century Cuba, bandits terrorize the countryside as a young farm girl struggles with dyslexia. Based on the life of the author's grandmother.

Hurricane Dancers by Margarita Engle

Hurricane Dancers: The First Caribbean Pirate Shipwreck by Margarita Engle
Henry Holt
2011
145p.

Quebrado has been a slave on captain Bernadino de Talavera's pirate ship for years, but when a hurricane sinks the ship and kills most of the crew, Quebrado escapes to safety and finds acceptance and refuge in a nearby village.

The Firefly Letters by Margarita Engle

The Firefly Letters

Henry Holt and Company, LLC

March 2010

151 pgs.

Summary

This novel is written in verse. It is based on the diaries and letters of Swedish suffragist Fredrika Bremer. She spent three months in Cuba in 1851. The story is told in three alternating free-verse narratives. Fredrika remembers her oppressed childhood in Sweden. Cecilia, a teenage slave, recounts being captured in the Congo at age eight. Elena belongs to a slave-owning family.