Forest World

Young People’s Poet Laureate Engle (Enchanted Air, 2016, etc.) brings readers the alternating poetic voices of a brother and sister navigating the complexity of their family dynamics and of “twenty-first-century attitudes / toward nature.”

Cuban-born, Miami-raised Edver, ne Verde, is sent by his cryptozoologist mother to Cuba to meet his father, not knowing that he has a sister just one year older waiting for him as well. Twelve-year-old Luza, nee Azul, is eager to meet her younger brother but soon feels the disparity in how they have grown up. Neither sibling understands the choices the adults in their lives have made—choices that have kept these two who could be twins, one with curly, one with straight hair, but both with “the same reddish-brown skin, black eyes, / fierce glares, and reversed names,” apart. Edver and Luza come together when they find themselves protecting the forest world they love. Readers may be unsatisfied with the unsurprising denouement, but the book arrives at a realistic open ending, and the poetic journey is one of rich juxtapositions between the real and the marvelous, technology and nature, science and art, past histories and possible futures.

In an evocative verse novel told in alternating voices, Engle (Lion Island) explores the challenges faced by "half-island half-mainland Cuban American families" after relations soften between the U.S. and Cuba. Eleven-year-old Edver has lived with his mother, a cryptozoologist, in Miami for most of his life. Luza is the 12-year-old sister Edver is surprised to meet when he arrives, alone, in the remote Cuban village of La Selva, from which he and his mother fled 10 years earlier. The siblings, both conflicted about the mother who separated them and abandoned Luza, find common ground in their love for the natural world their parents protect (their father patrols the forest for poachers). Trying to lure their mother to Cuba, the two unwittingly create a dangerous situation they must remedy. Filled with butterflies, hummingbirds, forest creatures, and fossils, Engle's affirming story is valuable both for the way the sciences inform it and for its careful attention to the relations between the Cubans who stayed and those who left the island. The late danger is fixed rather hastily, but the open-ended conclusion is realistically satisfying. Ages 10-up. Agent: Michelle Humphrey, Martha Kaplan Agency. (Aug.)

Gr 4-7--A novel in verse told from two perspectives. Eleven-year-old Edver is reunited with his family in Cuba after the reestablishment of relations with the United States. After growing up with his mother in Miami, Edver is unaware that he has a 12-year-old sister, Luza, who has been living with his father and grandfather in the Cuban jungle. Edver finds that the meager standard of living he enjoyed in the United States is enviable in comparison with that of Cuba; Luza resents Edver's apparent wealth. Engle's focus is mainly on familial relationships but includes a rather minor environmental conflict: while trying to get the attention of their mother, a cryptozoologist, Edver and Luza unite temporarily to post on the Internet about the discovery of a new butterfly. A poacher who works as a "Human Vacuum Cleaner" profiting from endangered species soon appears in the forest. Although the poacher problem is tied up neatly by the book's conclusion, the family issues mostly remain unsettled--a realistic, if unsatisfying, outcome. Edver and Luza are pleasingly realized with individual interests (online games and sculpture, respectively); the adult relationships, though, feel largely unexplored. VERDICT This well-timed and accessible work of eco-fiction should readily find its way into classrooms and libraries as an opening to learning more about the familial ties between the United States and one of its nearest neighbors.--Erin Reilly-Sanders, University of Wisconsin-Madison