Your Heart, My Sky

January 15, 2021
A young Cuban couple finds love while surviving desperate times of lack and longing. It's the summer of 1991, and people are experiencing hunger and malnutrition in Cuba. Fourteen-year-old Liana and 15-year-old Amado live in a town well away from the bustle of Havana, where the Pan American Games are taking place, and away from observation by foreign visitors. When the story opens, neither knows of the other despite enduring the same risky fate of opting out of the supposedly voluntary (although opting out brings consequences) teen farm labor program. Instead, they are roaming the streets searching for any form of sustenance to make up for insufficient government rations. Liana happens upon a stray dog and takes him home. Her canine companion eventually becomes a matchmaker, connecting the young couple. Their relationship feeds their drive to survive and gives them reason to dream of different, better days. Engle uses free verse poignantly to express the devastation of constant hunger and the ever present fear of punishment while trying to survive life under a harsh regime. The theme of hunger is central to this story--literal hunger due to starvation as well as hunger for connection and hope. Engle's words masterfully convey an evergreen human truth: that, in the end, we want to be able to live and love to our hearts' content. A deeply touching read that will stay with readers long after they turn the last page. (author's note) (Verse novel. 12-18)

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January 1, 2021
Grades 8-10 "Can love be enough in a time of hunger?" This is the tension Engle explores in her most recent novel in verse. Euphemistically called the Special Period in Time of Peace by the Castro administration, the 1990s were a time of extreme poverty and hunger caused by the abandonment of the fallen Soviet power, along with the U.S. trade embargo. A pair of teens, Liana and Amado, are drawn together by a stray dog they name Paz, who plays Cupid in their bleak, hunger-stricken lives. The poems alternate between the perspectives of these three characters, providing readers with an intimate view of the desperation people suffered at that time. Just as hunger preoccupies the mind of a starving person, it makes its presence known on every page. Liana and Amado fall in love, but even youthful passion is tempered by the fear of starvation. Readers will be motivated to do their own research about the Special Period, the balseros, and the innovative agricultural and artistic developments that came about because of and despite governmental restrictions.

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Starred review from April 26, 2021
Three-time Pura Belpré Medalist Engle (With a Star in My Hand) offers a soulful historical novel-in-verse, following a matchmaking dog and two malnourished teenagers who fall in love in 1990s Cuba. Utilizing titled free-verse poems, Engle highlights the “plunging shock of hunger” during Cuba’s “special period in times of peace” through three perspectives: Liana, 14, and Amado, 15, in their own words, and the omniscient third-person perspective of “the singing dog” Liana adopts. Full of gnawing hunger and defiant hope, both Liana and Amado have chosen to dodge “a summer of oppressive labor” in the sugar fields—and when their paths cross, sparks fly (“Embers flare/ within the heart’s sky/ like fireflies that blink/ as they search/ for mates.”). The first poem, “Island of Cuba: Summer 1991,” sets the tone immediately with its arresting opening line (“Imagine a year when food suddenly vanishes”), and as readers dig deeper into the story of Liana, Amado, and their canine “Cupid,” Engle’s words evocatively depict how love can thrive even under the harshest conditions. Back matter includes an author’s note. Ages 12–up. Agent: Michelle Humphrey, Martha Kaplan Agency.