Summers in Cuba

Childhood memories can be so vivid – a visit to grandma’s house, fishing with a cousin during summer vacation, maybe you actually roasted chestnuts on an open fire!   These experiences stay lodged in our minds our whole lives. Poet Margarita Engle knows this as well as anybody. She’s written a delightful picture book about her childhood visits with relatives every summer – in Havana! All the Way to Havana is the name of the book, and just to make sure the illustrator got things right, she sent him, an artist named Mike Curato, to stay with her relatives in Cuba, where he saw not only the city of Havana, but the countryside, too. Margarita Engle is the national Young People’s Poet Laureate, and, as a Cuban-American, is the first Latina to receive that honor. She’s a trained agronomist and botanist as well as a poet and novelist of award-winning books including The Surrender Tree, The Lightning Dreamer, Enchanted Air, and Drum Dream Girl.