Elisa Amado

"The powerful story of a child refugee seeking asylum in America Thirteen-year-old Manuelito is a gentle boy who lives with his family in a tiny village in the Guatemalan countryside. But life is far from idyllic: PACs--armed civil patrol--are a constant presence in the streets, and terrifying memories of the country's war linger in the villagers' collective conscience. Things deteriorate further when government-backed drug gangs arrive and take control...

Petit is a good boy who often displays bad behavior. When his mother asks how can this be, he thinks about it and gives her an answer.

"A powerful introduction to forced disappearances for readers 10 and up. By a closed door, a child waits for his uncle, who is coming to stay. As he waits, he imagines all the fun things they'll do when he arrives: his uncle can teach him how to block a penalty shot and the boy can show him how well he is doing in school. But his uncle never arrives. Page by page, the boy grows older sitting in the same position, waiting to show his uncle his degree,...

A young child describes what it is like to be a migrant as she and her father travel north toward the U.S. border. They travel mostly on the roof of a train known as The Beast, but the little girl doesn't know where they are going. She counts the animals by the road, the clouds in the sky, the stars. Sometimes she sees soldiers. She sleeps, dreaming that she is always on the move, although sometimes they are forced to stop and her father has to earn...

Napí, una niña mazateca, recuerda el tiempo en que su familia y otras familias tuvieron que abandonar el pueblo, debido a la construcción por el gobierno de una presa que inundaría todas las casas. Lo que Napí recuerda con más intensidad es el roce que su papá tuvo con la muerte al momento de la cosecha. When the government builds a dam that will flood Napí's Mazatec village, the people must move to a new site far away, where they burn the...

A collection of poems about pets inspired by children who sent the author humorous anecdotes about their pets.

A little girl chef dons her apron, singing and dancing around the kitchen as she shows us what to do. Argueta's gift in seeing beauty, magic and fun in everything around him makes this book a treasure -- avocados are like green precious stones, salt falls like rain, cilantro looks like a little tree and the spoon that scoops the avocado from its skin is like an excavating tractor. As in the previous cooking poems, "Guacamole" conveys the fun and pleasure...

"Maybe your school has a playground, gym, computers, and a library. But at this school in a faraway mountain range, things are a little different. There’s a blackboard, some chairs … and not much else. But with the help of an extraordinary teacher and a little imagination, anything is possible! The students in this spirited picture book spend their days drawing dinosaurs outdoors. They draw astounding, spectacular creatures that come...

Taken to live with her grandmother in the country, a young city girl finds a way to cope with the change brought about by her parents' separation when an owl, a frog, and a mouse take her on a nighttime tour of her extraordinary new world.

"This almost wordless picture book set in the dawn of human life imagines how art and storytelling were born from the power of one young girl's observation. Once upon a time, during the Pleistocene, somewhere between two-and-a-half million and ten thousand years ago, small groups of people traveled their known world, hunting for food, seeking shelter, and slowly becoming more like the people we are today. As far back as 40,000 years ago (and maybe...