The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom - Hardcover

Engle, Margarita

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805086749 ISBN 13: 9780805086744

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR), 2008

Synopsis

It is 1896. Cuba has fought three wars for independence and still is not free. People have been rounded up in reconcentration camps with too little food and too much illness. Rosa is a nurse, but she dares not go to the camps. So she turns hidden caves into hospitals for those who know how to find her.

Black, white, Cuban, Spanish―Rosa does her best for everyone. Yet who can heal a country so torn apart by war? Acclaimed poet Margarita Engle has created another breathtaking portrait of Cuba.

The Surrender Tree is a 2009 Newbery Honor Book, the winner of the 2009 Pura Belpre Medal for Narrative and the 2009 Bank Street - Claudia Lewis Award, and a 2009 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

About this title

About the Author

Margarita Engle is a Cuban American poet, novelist, and journalist whose work has been published in many countries. She is the author of young adult nonfiction books and novels in verse including The Poet Slave of Cuba, Hurricane Dancers, The Firefly Letters, and Tropical Secrets. The Surrender Tree was a Newbery Honor Book. She lives in northern California.

From AudioFile

This fascinating, beautifully crafted history follows Cuba's nineteenth-century struggles for independence from Spain. In alternating viewpoints and voices, we hear from Rosa, a Cuban healer; Lieutenant Death, a slave hunter who chases her; and Weyler, a ruthless Spanish army officer. Written in free verse, the novel presents a challenge to the narrators, who have to respect both the form of the poetry and the flow of the story. Unfortunately, Yesenia Cabrero, who presents Rosa's parts (which make up the bulk of the audiobook), reads too slowly, often with the wrong emphasis, pausing because she comes to the end of a line, regardless of whether it's the end of a thought or a sentence. The four other narrators read more naturally, which makes Rosa's sections distract even more. J.M.D. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

Edition details

• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0805086749
• ISBN 13: 9780805086744
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176