Nancy Garhan Attebury (Children's Literature)
Turbulent political times and tough lifestyle changes are brought to life in this unique book from the new series "First Person Fiction." A diary entry approach keeps one turning the pages to read every entry written from the viewpoint of 13-year-old Yara Garcia. Yara, living in Cuba in 1967, is first thrown into a new situation when she is forced to go to a program known as La Escuela al Campo. As her father believes, it proves to be more of a way to get free labor from youngsters than a camp and school situation. Unable to live with the communist beliefs, the family wins the right to move to America. The new lifestyle is shown to be hard on all family members, especially Yara's father and older sister. Strange ways, a desire to return to a homeland when it is free of communism, and family stress make Yara's diary entries compelling. This page-turner is filled with ideas, episodes, and emotions that pre-teens and teens can relate to. In addition, the book would provide an excellent supplemental text for history classes in both junior high and high school settings as they study the U.S. position with Cuba. 2002, Orchard Books/Scholastic, $16.95. Ages 11 to 15.

Elisabeth Greenberg (Children's Literature)
When her family decides to emigrate, Yara Garcia's father is sent off to harvest coffee, the price the family must pay to the government for the opportunity to leave. Yara discovers that her best friend cuts her dead, her younger sister is called names by her friends, and Papi returns looking like a ghost. Finally Yara, her Mami and Papi, and two sisters get their exit papers for Miami, Florida, but they must leave Yara's older brother Pepito behind, as he is doing his military service. In her diary Yara chronicles her first year in the U.S. She is exhilarated when she makes her first American friend, devastated when she can't speak English properly, torn constantly between her fading memories of home in Havana and her new life in Miami. Her once-loving parents fight in Miami as Mami reaches out to a new world of jobs and liberty while Papi trains with paramilitaries to liberate Cuba. This fascinating book documents one refugee's experiences as she comes to terms with a more open society. Unfortunately, the style is rather reportorial and the character Yara doesn't come alive on the page. 2002, Orchard Books/Scholastic, $16.95. Ages 12 up.

Marya Jansen-Gruber (Children's Literature)
Imagine having to stand in a line for hours just to get some soap and then not getting any because the store has run out. Imagine being separated from your family and friends for weeks by the government so that you can work on a farm picking tobacco leaves all day long. Imagine what it would feel like if your brother had to join the army when he was just sixteen and you had no news of him. These were things that Yara and her family had to deal with in their daily lives on the island of Cuba in the 1960s. Life was so hard that Yara's parents decided they were going to take advantage of "the Freedom Flights." They were going to take a few possessions and move to Miami for a short while until the political situation in Cuba got better. Written in first person as a diary, we are able experience Yara's exile with her. The author's writing style allows us to feel part of Yara's life and as if we are by her side on that first day in an American school. What a terrible day it is--she cannot understand English and has no idea what she is supposed to do. There are so many things to learn in this new country, like what Thanksgiving is, how American's celebrate Christmas, what a slumber party is, what a grilled cheese sandwich tastes like. Like so many others before and after her, Yara is caught between two worlds. "Do you stop loving your homeland if you live somewhere else...?" she asks herself. Her sisters and mother work hard to adapt to this new country while her father insists that they are going to return to Cuba soon. He actively participates in organizations that want to overthrow the communist government. For Yara, politics is confusing and she hates it all. War is wrong and all it does is kill people and take loved ones away. The author of this touching book succeeds in reminding us that America is still a refuge for people fleeing from oppression and conflict. She shows us with great understanding and sensitivity how hard it is to learn to live in a new place with new people and new ways. At the back of the book the reader will find a very useful and interesting history of Cuba and of the author's family story. This is one of the new "First Person Fiction" books. 2003, Scholastic, $16.95. Ages 12 up.

Kirkus (Kirkus Reviews, October 1, 2002 (Vol. 70, No. 19))
Cuban-born Veciana-Suarez, a Miami journalist and author of two previous novels for adults, brings forth a fine title, set in 1967, about young teen Yara Garcia and her family, immigrants to Miami from their native Havana. Part of the new diary-format First Person Fiction series, the tale describes the dramatic flight of the Garcia family and many others from the harsh conditions and cruel oppression of the Castro regime. The language is somewhat formal and may strike readers as having issued from an older girl, one very well versed in English. Nonetheless, Yara's depiction of her and her family's plight in Cuba and their gradual coming to terms with and adjustment to a very different language and lifestyle in America is credible, absorbing, and uplifting. The dignity of the Garcia family shines through as they attempt to make their way in their new society-which, as Yara frequently points out, is not expected to become their permanent home. The Cuban newcomers of this period, readers learn, fully hoped that they might yet return to their beloved homeland once Castro was ousted. History, of course, has borne witness to the failure of this to happen. Lest one imagine that this makes for dry, political reading, however, it must be noted that there's plenty here for young readers to relate to: new friends, new freedoms, sleepovers, school experiences, the celebration of American holidays, and cute boys all get their fair treatment in this worthy exposition. A feature of the series is a "My Personal Exodus" afterword in which each novelist describes his or her own experiences of coming to the US from another country. 2002, Orchard, $16.95. Category: Fiction. Ages 11 to 15. © 2002 Kirkus Reviews/VNU eMedia, Inc. All rights reserved.

Claire Rosser (KLIATT Review, November 2002 (Vol. 36, No. 6))
First Person Fiction is a new series of novels, somewhat like the successful Dear America series in that a narrator tells about some segment of the American experience in a diary format. The First Person Fiction series tells about immigrant life, and the first two books are by acclaimed authors who themselves are immigrants, sharing the experiences of their fictional narrators. (See Danticat, above.) The cover is a photograph of a teenager who could be the narrator, which is an appealing feature. Flight to Freedom tells of coming to America from Cuba in 1967, on the flights from Havana to Miami. Yara and her older sister, younger sister, mother and father come to join grandparents and other family in Miami, leaving behind her brother who is in the Cuban army and many other relatives. Yara's father believes the family will return to Cuba soon. The mother and older sister are more determined to adjust to new life in America. For instance, the mother gets a job and learns to drive a car despite her husband's protests, and Yara's older sister starts seeing boys on the sly and lying to her parents, who in their minds still live in a world where teenagers are chaperoned. Yara reports all these changes, the constant arguing of her parents, her own initial shyness and fear at school, and her gradual adjustment and acceptance of the American way of life. Here is a quote from Yara's diary that captures the immigrant experience so succinctly, especially the experience of families forced to leave their homelands: "There is something I have noticed about my family. Or maybe it's not just my family, but all families living in exile. It seems we can never be completely happy. Even when something good happens, something that we can laugh at or celebrate, there is still a sadness buried under our skin, flowing through our veins, because we are not living where we want to be and because we are separated from those we love." (First Person Fiction series) Category: Hardcover Fiction. KLIATT Codes: J--Recommended for junior high school students. 2002, Scholastic/Orchard, 197p., $16.95. Ages 12 to 15.

Jackie Bach (The ALAN Review, Winter 2003 (Vol. 30, No. 2))
As one of the two novels in of the new First Person Fiction series by Scholastic, Flight to Freedom is a first person fictional account, written in the form of a diary, of Yara Garcia's immigration to Miami. The first quarter of the novel takes place in Cuba, as Yara and her family wait for the government to process their visas to the United States. In the meantime, Yara's Papi must work out in the fields, and she and her sister Ileana spend forty-five days laboring on a tobacco farm. Finally, they arrive in the U.S. only to face a new set of challenges. Yara has left her brother and other relatives behind, and she must contend with learning a new language, and a new way of life. Her Mami (mother) learns to drive and gets a job, while Papi (father) joins an anti-Castro group which hopes to end his rule, by force if necessary. Readers will relate to Yara's struggles with her parents as she tries to convince them to allow her to attend parties and travel with her friend, and as she keeps her sister's secrets. After the end of the diary entries, Veciana-Suarez recounts her own journey from Cuba to the United States, and how she gathered information for Yara's story. The First Person Fiction series resembles the Dear America series, and Scholastic has future accounts planned from Chinese Americans, Haitian Americans, and Puerto Rican Americans. Category: Historical Fiction/Immigrant experience. YA--Young Adult. 2002, Orchard Books, 208 pp., $16.95. Ages young adult.Claremore, OK

Fern Kory (The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, February 2003 (Vol. 56, No. 6))
One of the first novels in the multicultural First Person Fiction series (see also Danticat's Behind the Mountains, reviewed above) about coming to America, this thoughtfully detailed fictional diary follows the 1967 journey of a thirteen-year-old girl, Yara García, from Havana, Cuba to Miami, USA, where her family plans to stay only until Castro is deposed. By quoting her elders and capturing her own responses to them and to her situation, Yara believably documents the family’s gradual psychological evolution from middle-class respectability to counterrevolutionary “worms” (gusana) in Cuba, and from exiled expatriates to more settled immigrants in America. Carefully selected incidents illuminate life under communist rule (rationing, retributive political correctness, and forced labor in agricultural “camps”) and in their new world, where each wages his or her own “war of independence”: Mami gets a job and learns to drive, middle-aged Papi weekends with a makeshift militia with revolutionary aims, sixteen-year-old Ileana sneaks off to see a boy, and Yara stretches cultural boundaries by pushing to go on a trip with a friend. As she adjusts to her new home, Yara also begins to face the paradox of bilingualism: “If I know both languages equally, in what language will I think? How will I dream? How will I pray? Already I know the names for certain things in English but not in Spanish. I’ve learned them in school and have to ask Papi or Mami to translate the word into Spanish.” The novel ends on the fourth of July, but without fireworks: Papi is still saying, “Next year we’ll be in Cuba,” but the trajectory of the book makes that doubtful even to readers unfamiliar with the historical reality. An authorial afterword (“My Personal Exodus”) adds further historical context and some personal history to this accessible but richly textured fictional memoir. Review Code: R -- Recommended. (First Person Fiction) (c) Copyright 2003, The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 2002, Orchard, 213p, $16.95. Grades 6-10.

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, 215pp, $16.95. Ages 12 to 14. Rating: 2: Superior, well above average.

Sherry York (VOYA, February 2003 (Vol. 25, No. 6))
In 1967, thirteen-year-old Yara begins writing in her diary in Havana and records the lives of her family through the following year as they leave their beloved homeland to begin a new life in Miami, Florida. Papi becomes involved in a paramilitary group determined to return to Cuba. Meanwhile Mami gets a job and learns to drive a car despite her traditional husband's objections. Older sister Ileana starts sneaking out to meet a boy, gets involved in the peace movement, and gets a job. Yara endures the agony of going to school without knowing any English, wearing clothes that are all wrong, being without friends, and being laughed at because she does not know how to act in this strange, new culture. While calling them "dark times," the family moves ahead with their lives, never forgetting that their son Pepito was left behind in the army in Cuba. Cousin Efrain joins the U.S. Marines and is likely to be sent to fight in Vietnam. Yara has a birthday, her beloved grandfather Tony dies, and she is allowed to take a trip with her new friend. Always mindful that they are in exile, Yari's father's favorite expression is "Next year we'll be in Cuba." Part of the First Person Fiction books that are based on an author's real-life experiences, this readable story will provide ample material for meaningful discussions about history, government, cultures, and values. This author joins Anilu Bernardo to form a tiny list of fiction for younger readers by Cuban Americans. VOYA CODES: 3Q 4P M J (Readable without serious defects; Broad general YA appeal; Middle School, defined as grades 6 to 8; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9). 2002, Orchard, 197p, $16.95. Ages 11 to 15.