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Welcome to our third week of our Bookjumper Summer Reading Series! This is my way of inspiring parents who are looking for creative ways to keep their kids reading this summer!

Our summer reading program will be a combination of some really neat things. All of our protagonists are girls or women and most of our showcased authors are women as well. I will be offering up a combination of themed weeks, great novels, booklist giveaways, and blog post recaps so be sure and stop by to discover more wonderful ways have A Book-jumper Summer while Exploring Our World and Beyond!

This week I want to focus on the wonderful works of one of our favorite authors, Pam Munoz Ryan.

When my intern Hannah and I were planning what books we’d jump into this summer, her eyes popped open and shouts of glee were heard after I asked, “What about Esperanza Rising?” According to Hannah it is one of her all time favorite books which she goes to again and again. I think we can say that Esperanza Rising is a close and dear friend to Hannah.

So thanks to that confession, Esperanza Rising made our summer reading list and our lovely Hannah Rials is sharing her views on one of her favorite reads……oh and by the way, mine too!

From Hannah……

Esperanza Ortega lives a live of privilege in Aguascalientes, Mexico. Her father owns El Rancho de las Rosas where he grows rows of roses and grapes. Esperanza is treated like a princess, with beautiful gifts, loving parents, loyal servants, and wonderful friends.

When bandits kill her father, her mother and her lives are uprooted. Her evil uncles wish to take over the ranch and her eldest uncle to marry her mother, Esperanza, Ramona, and their loyal servants are forced to flee Mexico, leaving an ill Abuelita to heal with her sisters at the convent. With all their papers in order, they sneak out of Aguascalientes by cover of darkness to travel into the United States for work.

Here, Esperanza discovers the hardships of life, responsibility, and so many other experiences that her life of privilege had shielded her from.

She, along with 5 other people, live in a two room cabin with no warm water in California. They work unreasonable hours, but they must work, or there will be no food on the table. Being only thirteen, Esperance lucks out of having real work, instead being charged with watching the babies and sweeping. That is, until her mother falls ill with Valley Fever.

Five months, Esperanza prays for her mother as she heals in the hospital. In less than a year, Esperanza has lost her father, had to leave her abuelita, watched her mother grow weaker, and begin to work with the rest of the women. To her, hope does not exist. Will the valleys, as abuelita says, ever turn into mountain tops?

Esperanza Rising has a special place in my heart. As a child, I read this book several times, and at the time, I was not sure why I was so connected to this novel, with a lifestyle that I could not relate to. It doesn’t matter that I cannot empathize with the situation because I love these characters. Esperanza is  alive—her temper, her kindness, her selfishness, her newly learned wisdom. All the characters are so alive, that I believe they are real. And that is what makes this story so amazing. Ms. Ryan based this story off of the life of her grandmother. To her, these are real people, and because of this truth of them, this idol to hold them up to, they are made all the more real for us. I love this book, because I am an only child, because I love my mother and my grandmother who smells like peppermint.
Ms. Ryan also offers interesting insight into the Mexican Repatriation in her Author’s note. This is one note that you don’t want to ignore.

Something To Do Book-Inspired Activities:
Rosehip Tea recipe (like Hortensia makes). Rose hips produce a mild, tangy, fruity tea. Use them solo or combined with a hint of fresh spearmint or peppermint leaves. Chilled and sweetened with stevia, the tea is a vitamin-rich, sugar-free alternative to fruit juices or Kool-Aid that is appealing to kids and adults alike. Grab the full process HERE.

Crochet a Shawl (like Abuelita). Hopeful Honey has great tips on Crochet for Beginners.

Yarn Dolls (for all of Isabel’s friends). Yarns are fun and easy to make (great project for kids!) Get the full tutorial at Little House Living.

What book-inspired fun will you do today

**Don’t Forget!!!! We have TWO wonderful book giveaways going on and ending SOON. Enter my giveaways here and here.…but don’t delay!

**some of these links are affiliate links

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The post The Book-Jumper Summer Reading Series: Esperanza Rising Book Review & Activity appeared first on Jump Into A Book.

Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month, our website currently features Juan Felipe Herrera’s personal essay, “Apartment Heritage”, in which he beautifully reminisces about his relatives’ one-bedroom apartment in San Diego, where he lived with his family in the 1960’s. The essay uses the apartment as a metaphor for his identity formation, contrasting the life inside it — an “invisible library of culture and family histories”— to the life outside— “that uncanny, whirling splish-splash of chaos, unfiltered, untold.”

Much of Herrera’s work is autobiographical, and two of his books, Downton Boy (Scholastic. Ages 12+), winner of the 2007 Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award, and Upside Down Boy, illustrated by Elizabeth Gómez (Children’s Book Press. Ages 4-8), were inspired by his childhood as the son of migrant workers in the 1950’s. His family experienced what many thousands of others do who choose or are forced to leave their homeland to search for better, more secure lives.

For many years Herrera traveled with his parents through the small farming towns of California’s Central Valley, changing schools with the seasons, always the “new boy,” always yearning for stability. Stability, however, brought its own set of conflicts: between languages; between old and new; between tradition and change. In Downtown Boy, his mom worries about the lure of life in the city’s barrio, and urges him to stay “close to home.” But where is home when you have been moving around for so long?

With so many influences and so much to reconcile and draw from, it’s no surprise that Herrera not only became a poet, writer and performance artist but also founded bilingual theater, music and poetry troupes that travel the world, telling and singing stories of pride in heritage—and in newness.

Herrera’s recent poetry books for adults have been enthusiastically reviewed in The New York Times.

For more by other writers about Latino migrant workers, their struggles and accomplishments, see The Circuit, Harvesting Hope, Esperanza Rising and First Day in Grapes.