Becoming Naomi Leon

lionsrcute1 - I loved this book! It was about an girl called Naomi and her brother Owen, who was born crippled. They were raised by their grandmother, since Naomi's mom took them away, but then ditched them and gave them to their grandmother. One day, their mother comes and interrupts their peaceful life (well, sort of) and tries to get Naomi back, but not Owen. At first, Their real mom, Skye is very nice. She bribes them with gifts, and she pretends to be nice. But still, she was never a good mom, and started to lose her temper and not care about them. Naomi learns that her mom never did care about them from her heart, but was just using gifts to make them like her. Naomi also finds out, while waiting at school for her mom that she was at an rehab center multiple times, and started drinking AGAIN. When Skye goes to court, saying she wants to keep Naomi, Naomi's closest family and friends go with her to Mexico to seek help from her dad. This was an one of a kind book that you MUST read! If you like my reviews, please follow me.

Starred review from September 13, 2004
Fifth-grader Naomi's great-grandmother has been a loving guardian for Naomi and Owen, her handicapped brother, since their mother divorced their father and abandoned them in Lemon Tree, Calif., seven years before. When the children's mother, Skyla, makes a sudden reappearance, she wants Naomi to leave Gram and Owen to move to Las Vegas—and Gram fears that Skyla and her new boyfriend have ulterior motives. "What locked the possibility of catastrophe in my mind, was that Gram and Fabiola were going to miss Wheel of Fortune
, and that
was going to mess up their 744 nights-in-a-row record," Naomi thinks. Feisty Gram takes action: she and Fabiola and her husband, who hail from Oaxaca City, Mexico, and who knew the children's father, take the children and embark on an odyssey of sorts, in search of their father at Oaxaca's annual radish-carving festival. Once again, Ryan (Esperanza Rising
) crystallizes the essence of settings and characters through potent, economic prose. Through Naomi's first-person narration, the author gently captures the girl's simultaneous attraction to and wariness of her mother with Naomi's first impression: "I couldn't take my eyes off her lipstick. It was the exact same color as her hair and went up and down in a perfect rounded M
on her top lip." And the heroine's skill with carving connects her to her father long before they finally meet. Sharing her protagonist's love of language, artistic sensibility and keen sensitivity, Ryan creates a tender tale about family love and loyalty. Ages 8-12.