Soaring Earth

Margarita leaves her childhood behind as well as summer trips to her mother's Cuba.  She dreams of returning to Cuba and traveling the world. This story of her life is written in poetry, short expressions of emotions as she fumbles through the reality of life.  

"How many other illusions do I experience, along with this one that fools me into thinking I'm capable of choosing my own direction." (59)

She gets lost in the idealistic life presented to her by so many others. Self identity is hard in high school, as a Cuban American she struggles with where she belongs.  Margarita grapples with finding her place with older boyfriends, drugs and war protests. 

"Do I need to alter my own definition of self?" (74)

Margarita hopes that she has found her place at UC Berkeley, instead she feels lost as a freshman. Slowly she finds things that she loves such as the beauty of the Hindi language, but she is also easily influenced as she tries to find her identity.  Strikes and riots equal missed tests and flunked classes.  Margarita finds herself lost, easily persuaded as she still holds onto her childhood dreams of Cuba.

"I've lost my identity
no longer a student
my face in the mirror
this dropout
a stranger." (83)

No school, no job, no home Margarita leaves readers wondering why she doesn't go home to start new again.  Instead she joins a commune, learns a trade, she roams the woods and once again is manipulated as she holds on to her dream of returning to Cuba. 

"This time, I won't give up. 
I need to learn how to help feed the hungry
with roots, shoots, seeds, fruit
and perseverance." (147)

"Hope follows wherever we go." (157)

This is Margarita's story of leaving her childhood, having hopes and dreams and teaching us that sometimes we must be lost before we can find ourselves and start again.

Students that enjoy this type of verse novel, although still nonfiction may also enjoy Inside Out and Back Again and Words with Wings.  Nonfiction written in this format is personal and it is because of the format that students can be drawn into another culture or experience.  They are relatable and make a good platform for beginning classroom discussions and would serve as a lead in on each of their own particular topics or together on a broader topic of self-identity.  While these three books range in age recommendations as low as third for Inside Out and Back again, Lexile level of 800, up to 7th grade to high school for Soaring Earth, Lexile level 1190, I think all three would be excellent collections to a school library.

Engle, M. (2019). Soaring earth. New York, NY: Atheneum.
Thanhha, L. (2013). Inside out and back again. New York, NY: Harper Collins
Grimes, N. (2013). Words with wings. New York, NY: Penguin.