Release: May 1st, 2021
Format: Ebook
Publisher: Groundwood Books
Source: Netgalley
Find it at Goodreads, Amazon, Kindle, B&N, Kobo
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Even for an experienced traveler like Charlie, Cuba is a place unlike any he has visited before. It is an island full of surprises, secrets, and puzzling contradictions.
Charlie’s artist mother receives an invitation to visit a school in Cuba. The whole family goes along on the trip. But the island they discover is a far cry from the resorts that Charlie has heard his friends talk about.
Charlie has never visited a country as strange as Cuba. It is a country where he often feels like a time traveler. Here Havana’s grand Hotel Nacional sits next to buildings that seem to be crumbling. The streets have empty storefronts and packs of wild dogs. But flowers and sherbet-colored houses are lying around the next corner, and music is everywhere. Also, there are many different kinds of walls, from Havana’s famous sea wall to the invisible ones that seem to keep tourists and locals apart.
Then the family heads traveling by hot, dusty bus to Viñales. There Charlie makes friends with Lázaro, who often flies from Miami to visit his Cuban relatives. The boys ride a horse bareback, find a secret cache of rifles inside a little green mountain. There, they go swimming with small albino fish in an underground cave. A rent a wreck takes the family into the countryside, where they find an abandoned hotel. While there are goats around, there is also a modern resort full of tourists.
And as he goes from one strange and marvelous escapade to another, Charlie finds that his expectations about a place and its people keep changing again and again.
About the Author:
Marie-Louise Gay is an internationally acclaimed author and illustrator of children’s books. She has won two Governor General’s Awards, the Vicky Metcalf Award and the Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award. Also, she has been nominated for the prestigious Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award and the Hans Christian Andersen Award. Her Stella and Sam series has been made into a TV show and translated into more than twenty languages, and her new picture books continue to garner starred reviews — Mustafa (2018), Fern and Horn (2019), The Three Brothers (2020).
David Homel is an award-winning novelist, screenwriter, journalist, and translator. He has won the Governor General’s Award for translation, the Hugh MacLennan Prize, and the Jewish Public Library Award for fiction.
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Travels in Cuba Review:
I didn’t know that “Travels in Cuba” was part of an ongoing series called “Travels with My Family,” but that did not stop me from appreciating the story.
I admire the concept of the series where younger readers get to know about a new country and have fun with the characters. It’s a fun novel that is part adventure and part education. The story would expose readers to how people live in Cuba and their various cultures and traditions.
The authors did a great job in highlighting some facts about Cuba. They mention prominent figures like Che Guevara, Yasiel Puig, and Fidel Castro and movements like the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Moreover, I did not even know about Mojotes in Vinales until I read this book. Reading the book prompted me to research some of the topics further. Even the supporting characters like Gloria and Lázaro were memorable. I particularly liked Charlie’s friendship with Lázaro and how knowledgeable he was. I enjoyed the scenes where Charlie meets the fortune-teller. The illustrations are also beautiful and appealing and complement the story very nicely.
Probably the only criticism I have towards the tale is how there is no overlaying plot. It would have been nice if there was a theme to the story that leads to a conclusion. Sometimes, it felt that the family was traveling from one place to another and exploring the cultures.
Apart from that, I enjoyed reading “Travels in Cuba” and recommend it to parents who want to pick up a lovely middle-grade book for their children to learn about Cuba and its traditions.
