Wendy Glenn, Ph.D. (Children's Literature)
Thirteen-year-old Celiane lives with her mother and brother in rural Haiti in the turbulent times just following the 2002 Haitian presidential elections. Her father has gone to America to earn money to support the family. Despite the long-distance relationship, the father communicates with his wife and children via tape-recordings that are sent back and forth overseas. Celiane and her mother are hurt when a bomb explodes on the bus they are riding home from the market. This political attack and other acts of violence convince the father that it is time for his family to come and join him in New York. Celiane, her mother, and her brother arrive in Brooklyn shortly thereafter. Celiane shares the frustrations that result from being a newcomer in an unfamiliar place--getting lost on her way home from school, feeling isolated due to a lack of friends, fearing that her father regrets having sent for the family. These concerns are compounded by the fact that her brother wishes to become a painter, an unstable career choice according to the father. With time and communication, however, Celiane and her family are able to make a new home for themselves and realize how fortunate they are to have one another. Celiane tells her story in her journal, lending authenticity and reality to her voice. Beautifully written with characters that we want to see succeed; this novel is a worthwhile addition to the "First Person Fiction" series that features authors of various backgrounds who write about the experience of coming to America. The novel concludes with the first person account of Danticat's own voyage to America, creating an effective parallel between fiction and reality. 2002, Orchard Books, $16.95. Ages 10 to 15.

Susie Wilde (Children's Literature)
Celiane Esperance is the heroine of Edwidge Danticat's Behind the Mountains. Celiane's father has left his family in Haiti to seek a better life for them in New York City. When his wife and daughter are nearly killed in an explosion, he sends for them immediately. Celiane has a tough transition. Danticat has a split personality when she writes for children. On one hand, she trusts their sophistication and intelligence enough to give them the full beauty of her prose. Celiane writes in her journal, "My Pen is your tongue and I am your voice so you will never betray my secrets." You accept her rather-adult metaphors and perceptions because she is a bright viewpoint character. Besides, the words are so lovely. Just when you are swept up in her prose, Danticat sticks in clunky hunks of information. Celiane writes, "I learned from my geography lesson that the name of this country, Haiti, comes from the Awawak Indian word Ayiti, which means mountainous land or land on high." Paragraphs of definition shatter Danticat's lyricism to fill children in on the Day of the Dead, or the 1987 election in Haiti. Beautiful proverbs seem sprinkled just a bit too liberally when Danticat feels she must explain them. The duel between Danticat's musical writing and her didactics results in a jarring read. 2002, Scholastic, $16.96. Ages 11 to 13.

Marya Jansen-Gruber (Children's Literature)
Celiane, her brother Moy, and her mother Aline live in the beautiful mountains on the island of Haiti. Though they are poor and have a simple existence, they are on the whole a happy family, except for one thing. Celiane's father Victor is not with them. He is in New York City trying to raise enough money to bring his family to America to join him. Having the family broken up is hard for everyone, and at the same time, the thought of leaving Haiti is also hard. As with so many young people, Celiane feels torn between the love of her homeland and those who live there, and the love of her father who has left to try to build a better life for his family elsewhere. It is an old story that has been told many times before, yet Edwidge Dandicat has succeeded in telling Celiane's story in such a way that it is fresh and poignant, bittersweet and heartwarming. The pain that political strife can bring to the innocent is especially sharp and clear in this story, as Celiane's family is personally touched by the violence that rocks Port-au-Prince during the Presidential elections in 2000. Reading about such a state of affairs is a grim reminder of how many people in other parts of the world must live their lives day after day. Drawing on her personal memories and from material that she gathered on her more recent trips back to Haiti, Edwidge Dandicat has created a memorable book which will give anyone who reads it a picture of a culture that is vibrant, warm and colorful. It shows us the world of a people who struggle to find peace and stability in their daily lives. At the back of the book the reader will find an interesting description of the author's own journey from Haiti. This is one of the new "First Person Fiction" books. 2003, Orchard Books, $16.95. Ages 11 to 15.

CCBC (Cooperative Children's Book Center Choices, 2003)
Celiane, her mother and older brother, Moy, are living in Haiti while her father is in Brooklyn, New York. During the violent presidential elections in Haiti in the year 2000, both Celiane and her mother are injured in a bomb explosion. The family decides the time has come to be reunited. Celiane is sad to be leaving her beautiful country and relatives, but so eager to see Papa. Her joy fades quickly, however, overwhelmed by the changes in her life. Her new middle school in Brooklyn is huge. When she gets lost the first time she tries to get back to their apartment on her own, she feels she's failed her Papa. At home, her father and brother begin arguing-Moy wants to pursue art, while Papa wants him to attend the university once he learns enough English. Even her parents, who had missed each other so much, are fighting. Their 2-bedroom apartment seems so very small in the midst of it all. Edwidge Danticat's first book for young reader's is written as journal entries in Celiane's sensitive, first-person voice. It's a swiftly paced novel grounded in details that lend weight and realism to Celiane's situation as she chronicles the events in her life, which unfold to reveal both pleasures and disappointments and, ultimately, a future she looks toward with hope. Danticat briefly recounts her own story of coming to the United States from Haiti as a child in an afterword. CCBC categories: Fiction For Children; Contemporary People, Places, And Events. 2002, Orchard / Scholastic Inc., 166 pages, $16.95. Ages 11-14.

Kirkus (Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 2002 (Vol. 70, No. 18))
A 13-year-old Haitian girl describes, over the course of five months, her life in Haiti and then in New York as she, her mother, and her brother join her father, who left Haiti years before. Celiane loves her life in the mountain village of Beau Jour; she is near her grandparents, the mountains agree with her, and she is the recent recipient of a journal from her teacher-because she is such a good writer. The only hole in her life is that left by her father, who sends a cassette tape addressing each family member in turn, but from whom she feels increasingly estranged by time and distance. When the bus she and her mother are riding in gets blown up in pre-election violence-the year is 2000, and Jean-Bertrand Aristide is running for re-election-the effort to reunite with her father moves into high gear. Her Tante Rose, a nurse, pulls some diplomatic strings, and suddenly they are all together in New York. This is Danticat's (After the Dance, p. 782, etc.) first novel for children, and it shares with others that have gone before it a tendency to write down to the audience. The diary entries are by and large flat; Celiane writes of the violence in curiously disengaged tones, considering that she and her mother are victims. Likewise, when the narrative moves to New York, the upheaval this creates for the family is related from a distance, despite the supposed current nature of the diary: "It wasn't anything [Papa] said, just the way his face looked, tightly drawn and strained. Perhaps we, especially me, were going to be more of a burden to him than he had first thought." It is unfortunate that there are so few children's novels of Haiti that this offering naturally begs comparison to Frances Temple's electrifying A Taste of Salt (1992). This, alas, is a pale successor. 2002, Orchard, $16.95. Category: Fiction. Ages 9 to 14. © 2002 Kirkus Reviews/VNU eMedia, Inc. All rights reserved.

Claire Rosser (KLIATT Review, November 2002 (Vol. 36, No. 6))
Danticat, author of Breath, Eyes, Memory and Krik? Krak!, both highly praised novels about Haitian life, writes here for the new series of immigrant stories, First Person Fiction. (See also the novel about Cuban Americans by Veciana-Suarez, below). The diary begins in October 2000, when Haiti is filled with violence and general unrest with the elections taking place and the promise of many changes. Celiane tells her own story, about life behind the mountains, far from the city and the problems there. Celiane's father has been in New York for many years now, and the family survives through the money he can send home to them; they treasure the tapes he sends telling them how much he loves and misses them. Celiane's brother Moy is 19, an artist who longs to live in Port-au-Prince with Tante Rose, so the family travels there to get him settled. On their return home, the van they are riding in is bombed, which serves as a catalyst finally to get Celiane's family the visas they need to go to New York to be reunited with their father. Once in New York, after the initial joy at the reunion, their family life starts to unravel. Moy is not eager to quietly obey his father. It's freezing cold, school is difficult and lonely, and the parents work long hours at a restaurant. The father means well, but he frankly is out of touch with his children and how much older they are, especially his son, who now is a young man after all and not the young teenager the father left behind in Haiti so many years ago. Danticat brings her formidable skill as a writer and her own firsthand knowledge of Haiti and immigrating to America to this heartfelt story, told in the intimate diary format. (First Person Fiction) Category: Hardcover Fiction. KLIATT Codes: JS*--Exceptional book, recommended for junior and senior high school students. 2002, Scholastic/Orchard, 153p., $16.95. Ages 12 to 18.

Kimberly Sandberg (The ALAN Review, Spring/Summer 2003 (Vol. 30, No. 3))
Young Celiane is presented with the best gift of all, a blank notebook, in which she decides to write down all of her feelings. Living in Haiti, Celiane, her brother Moy, and her mother, Manman, are threatened by bombs going off in Port-au-Prince during election time. Celiane writes of her mixed emotions of the uncertainty of their arrival in New York, where their father has been working to support them. As they begin their new life in New York as a family reunited, things are not as picture perfect as Celiane had imagined. Celiane encounters many things that confuse her emotions, including moving to a brand new country, riding in a bus that has been bombed, having a brother that moves out of the house. Celiane is able to record and sort out this spectrum of feelings by writing them in her little notebook. The first person narration by the author of Krik? Krak! will likely capture reader's hearts and emotions as Celiane's pain, sadness and triumph are shared in this interesting story. Category: Violence/Family Upheaval. YA--Young Adult. 2002, Orchard Books, 176 pp., $16.95. Ages young adult.Wheaton, IL

Fern Kory (The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, February 2003 (Vol. 56, No. 6))
In the notebook given to her by her teacher, Celiane Espérance begins by recording daily life in her mountain village in Haiti, then going on to describe a disastrous visit to Port-au-Prince (where Celiane and her mother are injured in a bombing associated with the 2000 elections). In the second half of this novel, her existence has changed: she’s now writing about life in Brooklyn, where she, her mother, and nineteen-year-old brother have joined her father (whose immigration status has finally become regularized). More timely if not quite as engaging as Veciana-Suarez’s Flight to Freedom (the other inaugural volume of the First Person Fiction series, reviewed below), this immigration diary has a flat tone despite Celiane’s colorful phraseology, and the characters don’t really come to life until they hit New York (where Celiane observes, “I kept thinking the same thing I did the first time I went to Port-au-Prince . . . How can some people live in a small village . . . with only lamps for illumination . . . and others live . . . where every street corner has its own giant lamp? It made the world seem unbalanced somehow”). The drama picks up with an understandable conflict between Celiane’s father and the grown son he still treats as a boy. Readers will also understand Celiane’s difficulties talking to her father (“I plan for so long about what to say to Papa, but put him on the phone and what comes out, anyen, nothing”); by finding her voice, Celiane helps effect a reconciliation between this long-estranged father and his son. The authorial afterword (“My Personal Exodus”) points out personal experiences on which the novelist was able to draw in writing this accessible story that gives equal time to “two kinds of migration”: from the country to the city, and from there to America. Review Code: Ad -- Additional book of acceptable quality for collections needing more material in the area. (First Person Fiction) (c) Copyright 2003, The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 2003, Orchard, 166p, $16.95. Grades 5-8.

Horn Book (The Horn Book Guide, Spring 2003)
The two books in this new series give narrative life to the American immigrant experience. In both novels, a thirteen-year-old protagonist records in her diary her feelings about, in Flight, leaving Cuba for Miami in 1967 or, in Mountains, leaving Haiti for New York in 2000. The excellence of the writing and the resilient outlook of both first-person fictions set a high standard for this series. [Review covers these First Person Fiction titles: Behind the Mountains and Flight to Freedom.] (First Person Fiction series). Category: Older Fiction. 2002, Scholastic/Orchard, 167pp, $16.95. Ages 12 to 14. Rating: 2: Superior, well above average.

Lynne Hawkins (VOYA, February 2003 (Vol. 25, No. 6))
Behind the mountains are more mountains." Danticat has used the Haitian proverb more than once in her autobiographical novels of living in Haiti and New York. This book purports to be the diary of thirteen-year-old Celiane Espérance as she describes her life in a village in the mountains of Haiti and then her adjustment to New York City. Celiane, her brother, and mother live in the house that her father built. When a visit to an aunt in Port-au-Prince ends in politically motivated violence, they realize that they must leave, and if they can, go to New York to join their father and husband. Leaving home is never easy, however, even with plane tickets and visas. Life in New York is not quite the stuff of dreams. Behind the mountains are always more mountains. Overcome one obstacle and another moves right in. Celiane's story is close to Danticat's own, as the reader learns from the author's six-page postscript titled "My Personal Journey." If the diary device seems overused, know that this book employs a unique approach. The Dear America series and its offspring are based on historical research with the skillful authors leading the reader back in time. This series, First Person Fiction, asks its contributors to write from their own experiences, bringing authentic voices to books about immigration. Danticat's contribution offers an impressive start and might lead older readers to ask for more from this author. VOYA CODES: 4Q 4P M J (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses; Broad general YA appeal; Middle School, defined as grades 6 to 8; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9). 2002, Orchard, 153p, $16.95. Ages 11 to 15.