Lydia M. Gil

The main theme of the book is to show how something good can come out of something bad. I liked this book for three reasons. First the characters in the book are believable which helps the students connect to them. The main character is a girl names Mimi who is excited about going on vacation with her family and celebrating their traditions. There is nothing extraordinary about her life, like she owns her own plane because she is a princes, that would be a fantasy. Instead Mimi is like any girl who walked through the doors of a public school. Mimi’s character allows the students to feel like this story could be like their life. Another reason why I liked this book is because it uses third person point of view. I liked this for the book because it allowed the author to tell the story and all its elements. I feel if it was told in Mimi’s point of view, we would miss what is going on around her because she may not notice them. But when it was told in third person point of view we got a sense of what was going on behind the scenes. For example, “just as she was starting to fall asleep, Mimi heard noises outside her room. She opened her eyes, but she did not hear anything else.” This part of the book was focused on Mimi and what was going on outside. If it was in her point of view we would have missed the mystery of what is going on outside, because Mimi thought nothing of it. Lastly, I liked this book because it was written for bilingual children. It has both the story written in Spanish and underneath it is the English translation. Because the book is bilingual it teaches the rich traditions of someone who celebrates the Puerto Rican culture. For example, Mimi explains to her classmates all the food she cannot wait to eat at her grandparents house in Puerto Rico for the holidays.… (mer)