Thursday, January 6, 2011

Spotlight: Illegal by Bettina Restrepo

A promise.
QuinceaƱera.
A promise that we would be together on my fifteenth birthday . . .

Instead, Nora is on a desperate journey far away from home. When her father leaves their beloved Mexico in search of work, Nora stays behind. She fights to make sense of her loss while living in poverty—waiting for her father's return and a better day. When the letters and money stop coming, Nora decides that she and her mother must look for him in Texas. After a frightening experience crossing the border, the two are all alone in a strange place. Now, Nora must find the strength to survive while aching for small comforts: friends, a new school, and her precious quinceaƱera.

Bettina Restrepo's gripping, deeply hopeful debut novel captures the challenges of one girl's unique yet universal immigrant experience.



I am so excited for this book. As far as my limited knowledge goes there are no books for young people that detail or explain the crossing over from Mexico into America. This is a subject that I am dying to know more about and I think this book will be fabulous. It comes out in March and I hope to see it on the review link ups in March and April.


Bettina Restrepo received a BS from the University of Texas at Austin and is the author of a picture book, Moose and Magpie. She worked as an internal auditor in the Hispanic supermarket Fiesta Mart, which is portrayed in this book. There she examined firsthand the challenges in the nuances of life for illegal immigrants. Bettina lives with her family in Frisco, Texas, and is the daughter of Colombian and German immigrants.
Author Website

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

December winner + Grand Prize Giftcards

Our December and last (but surely not least) winner for December is

Tarie!!

The review chosen was Tarie's Gay-Neck: The Story of a Pigeon by Dhan Gopal Mukerjii. I detest pigeons but Tarie claims the author makes birds fascinating....

Tarie, feel free to email me or you can wait for me to email you in about 48 hours. Everyone else, thank you so much for entering the poc reading challenge! It means a lot to me personally that so many people supported this challenge and I'm honored (and ecstatic) to be a part of it.

If you didn't win in 2010, cheer up not only could you win in 2011 by signing up to do the challenge again but you could 1 of our 4 grand prizes! Thanks to the amazing Carol at RiF (Reading is Fundamental) we have four giftcards. 2 for Borders and 2 for Barnes & Noble, each one is worth $25. I don't know how we are going to top that in 2011, but ah well :)

To win all you have to do is WRITE YOUR WRAP UP POST. And don't forget to link it up here. I really want to see if people met their goal, exceeded it or maybe need to do a bit better. So help me out. I'm giving everyone about a week (because I'm nice and I have finals next week haha) so please, please have your post written and linked up by January 14th 11:59 PM CT.

Oh and I love getting emails letting me know you received your prize (if you haven't emailed me already). Just sayin ;)

Sunday, January 2, 2011

January 2011 Review Link-Ups!

Can you believe it's already 2011?? Where has the time gone?

This is the POC Reading Challenge Review Link-Up for January. Enter the direct link to your reviews, not to the main page of your blog. We'd like to be able to find your review directly through the link and not have to look for it. Thanks for participating!

Happy New Year, and happy reading!



This linky list is now closed.