Review: “With the Fire on High” by Elizabeth Acevedo was one of my favorite reads of last year, and even though I’ve had “Clap When You Land” on my to-read pile since it arrived last summer, I have to tell you guys I was a little intimidated. I wish more YA books would push the message that opening up about your problems is actually PREVENTIVE and HELPFUL. If you ever had anyone you loved and trusted turn out to be a very different person from the one you knew, you will share the heartbreak of this book. Written in a dual narrative we spend a lot of t This is so intense story consisting sensitive elements like sexual assault, grief, plane crush, betrayal, dysfunctional family dynamics.

ELIZABETH ACEVEDO is the author of Clap When You Land, With the Fire on High and The Poet X, which won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, the Michael L. There are two things that I didn't like about how the sexual harassment was handled in the story though: 1) There is a scene in which Camino wants to reach out to her aunt Tía to tell her about El Cero, but before she gets the chance, Tía accuses her of having let El Cero on, of inviting him into her life. Elizabeth Acevedo’s poetry combines with the heartwarming story based on true events: on November 2001, American Airlines Flight 587 flight was regularly scheduled to fly from JFK International Airport to Las Americas Airport in Santa Domingo but it crashed into Belle Harbor/on the Rockaway Peninsula of Queens, took 260 people’s lives and nearly %90 was Dominican and of Dominican descent.A story of the difference money can make, and of the crippling grip of poverty and the hold it has over even the most determined lives. This is also the chapter in which Camino has to reconcile her endless love for her home country ("This everyday kindness in my home. Interestingly, it doesn’t happen when I read lyrics, perhaps because I can hear the music and that grounds me.

It's clear that Yahaira didn't mean anything bad when she asked Camino to pick her up, but it's also understable that Camino would interpret that in a less favorable way. Not only are her writing and characters outstanding and utterly remarkable but the way she grapples with the various layers Latinx identity is something that I’ve never experienced before. Printz Award, the Pura Belpré Award, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, and the Walter Award, amongst many others. The book explores themes of grief, family, and cultural differences that would be great for her young adult audience to read. The anger you feel for her makes you want to just take El Cero apart, and it sucks how realistic the scenes of El Cero are for many young women in countries like DR.They are incredibly different young women, both living through an utterly bizarre situation, and as readers, we go through the immediate year following the plane accident with them. He is their idol, their hero and when he dies in a plane crash flying from New York to the Dominican Republic they are heartbroken.