Surrender Tree : Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom

The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle For Freedom / El árbol de la rendición: poemas de la lucha de cuba por su libertad is a lyrical, Newbery Honor-winning history in poems, and this bilingual edition has the Spanish and English text available in one book.

¿La Guerra Chiquita?
¿Cómo puede haber una guerra chiquita?
¿Acaso algunas muertes
son más pequeñas que otras,
dejan madres
que lloran
un poco menos?

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?

Using the true story of the folk hero Rosa la Bayamesa, acclaimed poet Margarita Engle gives us another gripping, breathtaking account of a tumultuous period in Cuban history.

A 2009 Newbery Honor Book
Winner of the 2009 Pura Belpré Medal for Narrative
Winner of the 2009 Bank Street - Claudia Lewis Award
A 2009 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year

Margarita Engle is the Cuban-American author of many verse novels, memoirs, and picture books, including The Surrender Tree, All the Way to Havana, Bravo!, Drum Dream Girl, and Dancing Hands. Awards include a Newbery Honor, Pura Belpré Medals, Golden Kite Award, Walter Honor, Jane Addams Award, PEN U.S.A., and NSK Neustadt Prize, among others. Margarita served as the national 2017-2019 Young People’s Poet Laureate.

Margarita was born in Los Angeles, but developed a deep attachment to her mother’s homeland during childhood summers with relatives on the island. She studied agronomy and botany along with creative writing, and now lives in central California.