Holding fast to the cultural heritage stories that say her people will one day return to live among the cranes in the promised land, a 9-year-old migrant, seeking refuge in Los Angeles from the Mexican cartel wars, learns to hold onto hope and love in a family detention center. Simultaneous eBook. - (Baker & Taylor)

Nine-year-old Betita and her parents fled Mexico after her uncle was killed by the cartels, and settled in Los Angeles seeking political asylum and safety in what her father calls Aztlan, the land of the cranes; but now they have been swept up by by the government's Immigration Customs Enforcement, her father deported back to Mexico, and Betita and her mother confined in a family detention camp--Betita finds heart in her imagination and the picture poems her father taught her, but each day threatens to further tear her family apart. - (Baker & Taylor)

From the prolific author of The Moon Within comes the heart-wrenchingly beautiful story in verse of a young Latinx girl who learns to hold on to hope and love even in the darkest of places: a family detention center for migrants and refugees.

Nine-year-old Betita knows she is a crane. Papi has told her the story, even before her family fled to Los Angeles to seek refuge from cartel wars in Mexico. The Aztecs came from a place called Aztlan, what is now the Southwest US, called the land of the cranes. They left Aztlan to establish their great city in the center of the universe-Tenochtitlan, modern-day Mexico City. It was prophesized that their people would one day return to live among the cranes in their promised land. Papi tells Betita that they are cranes that have come home.

Then one day, Betita's beloved father is arrested by Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) and deported to Mexico. Betita and her pregnant mother are left behind on their own, but soon they too are detained and must learn to survive in a family detention camp outside of Los Angeles. Even in cruel and inhumane conditions, Betita finds heart in her own poetry and in the community she and her mother find in the camp. The voices of her fellow asylum seekers fly above the hatred keeping them caged, but each day threatens to tear them down lower than they ever thought they could be. Will Betita and her family ever be whole again?

Aida Salazar is an award-winning author and arts activist whose writings for adults and children explore issues of identity and social justice. She is the author of the middle-grade verse novels The Moon Within (International Latino Book Award Winner), Land of the Cranes (Amricas Award Winner), the picture book anthology, In the Spirit of a Dream, and the picture book biography Jovita Wore Pants: The Story of a Mexican Freedom Fighter. She is a founding member of Las Musas, a Latinx kidlit debut author collective. Her short story "By the Light of the Moon" was adapted into a ballet production by the Sonoma Conservatory of Dance and is the first Xicana-themed ballet in history. She lives with her family of artists in Oakland, California. - (Scholastic)

Booklist Reviews

Salazar's (The Moon Within, 2019) poignant novel in verse tells the heartbreaking story of undocumented nine-year-old Betita and her family's mistreatment at the hands of ICE and La Migra (immigration enforcement) in 2019 East L.A. Betita has always loved Papi's stories of how their people came from Aztlán, "Land of the Cranes," now known as the U.S. Southwest, but when he's deported and she and her mother are detained, Betita witnesses the suffering and separation of families and, with the nuanced and honest perspective of a child who has had to grow up too soon, reveals her American experience and family trauma through "picture poems," depicting the beauty she finds in simple things like home-cooked family meals and the folktales of her ancestors. Through vignettes of her neighborhood and family, Betita weaves a story of the ancestral cranes trying to fly freely in a society that cages them, realizing the price of the American Dream and its realities for those who sacrifice and suffer in order to achieve it. Grades 3-6. Copyright 2020 Booklist Reviews.

Horn Book Guide Reviews

In her second verse novel, Salazar (The Moon Within) draws on her own experience as an undocumented child living in East L.A. to tell the story of nine-year-old Betita and her family, immigrants from Mexico. Betita's father tells her that their people belong where they are, since the area is in fact their ancestral homeland of Aztlan -- and that they, like cranes (used as a metaphor throughout), were always destined to return there. But when Papi is arrested by ICE and set to be deported to Mexico, a place too dangerous / to call home, Betita learns that her family is sin papeles, undocumented. Soon she and her mother, who is newly pregnant, are also detained, locked into a / chain-link cage made for cranes. Betita's voice is sensitively rendered in Salazar's verse, whose varied placement on the page, along with delicate black-and-white line drawings evoking Betita's picture poems, creates a sense of place, testimony to the experiences (including family separation and sexual abuse) of migrants and refugees detained at the border. Ultimately, despite the danger, Betita's family chooses voluntary departure; their bittersweet family reunion in Mexico leaves open the possibility that they, like the cranes, might someday return. Copyright 2021 Horn Book Guide Reviews.

Horn Book Magazine Reviews

In her second verse novel, Salazar (The Moon Within) draws on her own experience as an undocumented child living in East L.A. to tell the story of nine-year-old Betita and her family, immigrants from Mexico. Betita's father tells her that their people belong where they are, since the area is in fact their ancestral homeland of Aztlán -- and that they, like cranes (used as a metaphor throughout), were always destined to return there. But when Papi is arrested by ICE and set to be deported to Mexico, "a place too dangerous / to call home," Betita learns that her family is "sin papeles," undocumented. Soon she and her mother, who is newly pregnant, are also detained, "locked into a / chain-link cage made for cranes." Betita's voice is sensitively rendered in Salazar's verse, whose varied placement on the page, along with delicate black-and-white line drawings evoking Betita's "picture poems," creates a sense of place, testimony to the experiences (including family separation and sexual abuse) of migrants and refugees detained at the border. Ultimately, despite the danger, Betita's family chooses voluntary departure; their bittersweet family reunion in Mexico leaves open the possibility that they, like the cranes, might someday return. Anamaría Anderson July/August 2020 p.142 Copyright 2020 Horn Book Magazine Reviews.

Kirkus Reviews

A fourth grader navigates the complicated world of immigration. Betita Quintero loves the stories her father tells about the Aztlán (the titular land of cranes), how their people emigrated south but were fabled to return. Betita also loves to write. She considers words like "intonation," "alchemy," and "freedom" to be almost magic, using those and other words to create picture poems to paint her feelings, just like her fourth grade teacher, Ms. Martinez, taught her. But there are also words that are scary, like "cartel," a word that holds the reason why her family had to emigrate from México to the United States. Even though Betita and her parents live in California, a "sanctuary state," the seemingly constant raids and deportations are getting to be more frequent under the current (unnamed) administration. Thinking her family is safe because they have a "petition...to fly free," Betita is devastated when her dad is taken away by ICE. Without their father, the lives of the Quinteros, already full of fear and uncertainty, are further der ailed when they make the small mistake of missing a highway exit. Salazar's verse novel presents contemporary issues such as "zero tolerance" policies, internalized racism, and mass deportations through Betita's innocent and hopeful eyes, making the complex topics easy to understand through passionate, lyrical verses. An emotional and powerful story with soaring poetry. (Verse fiction. 8-12) Copyright Kirkus 2020 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.

Publishers Weekly Reviews

This free-verse novel by Salazar (The Moon Within), set in 2018 and narrated in the perceptive, compassionate voice of fourth grader Betita Quintero, offers a close look at the experiences of an undocumented Mexican-born child and her pregnant mother in a family detention center. Betita lives in modest circumstances in East Los Angeles with her loving, hardworking Mami and Papi, learning from inspiring teacher Ms. Martinez to create daily picture poems "to paint our feelings." The Quinteros' hopes that the sanctuary state will provide safety are dashed with an ICE raid at Papi's work site; when Betita and Mami travel to visit him at the Tijuana border, a missed turn takes them into Mexico and detainment in a "big frozen/ concrete monster," where they huddle with other women and children under Mylar "capes" in chain-link cells, and are mocked by the guards. Betita's faith in the story Papi tells—that one day "our people would return to Aztlán," the land of the cranes, the U.S. Southwest—sustains her as the picture poems she creates become both solace and a source of important documentation. Salazar's lyrical verse fashions empowerment out of indignity and suffering, creating a stirring and accessible, all-too-timely story. Ages 8–12. Agent: Marietta B. Zacker, Gallt & Zacker Literary. (Sept.)