Author :
Julia Alvarez
5th Grade and up
Antes de ser libres
Before We Were
Free
Antes
de ser libres, Softcover, Spanish, Book, Julia Alvarez,
5th Grade and up, 9780375815454,
$6.50
Before
We Were Free, Softcover, English, Book, Julia Alvarez,
5th Grade and up, 9780440237846,
$6.99
$333.83 for the Story Collection Pura Belpre Spanish Set, Including 20%-Off, Free Shipping, and No Sales Tax : 2 Hardcover Spanish Book, 8 Hardcover Bilingual Book, 19 Softcover Spanish Books, and 12 Softcover Bilingual Books
$448.07 for the Story Collection Pura Belpre English Set, Including 20%-Off, Free Shipping, and No Sales Tax : 24 Hardcover English Books and 18 Softcover English Books
Pura Belpre Award Winning Book in 2004 for Narrative
Anita de la Torre never questioned her freedom living in the Dominican Republic. But by her 12th birthday in 1960, most of her relatives have emigrated to the United States, her Tío Toni has disappeared without a trace, and the government’s secret police terrorize her remaining family because of their suspected opposition of el Trujillo’s dictatorship. Using the strength and courage of her family, Anita must overcome her fears and fly to freedom, leaving all that she once knew behind. From renowned author Julia Alvarez comes an unforgettable story about adolescence, perseverance, and one girl’s struggle to be free.
What would life be
like for a teen living under a dictatorship? Afraid to go to school or to talk
freely? Knowing that, at the least suspicion, the secret police could invade
your house, even search and destroy your private treasures? Or worse, that
your father or uncles or brothers could be suddenly taken away to be jailed or
tortured or killed? Such experiences have been all too common in the many
Latin American dictatorships of the last 50 years. Author Julia Alvarez (How
the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents) and her family escaped from the Trujillo
regime in the Dominican Republic when she was 10, but in Before We Were
Free she imagines, through the stories of her cousins and friends, how it
was for those who stayed behind. Twelve-year-old
Anita de la Torre is too involved with her own life to be more than dimly
aware of the growing menace all around her, until her last cousins and uncles
and aunts have fled to America and a fleet of black Volkswagens comes up the
drive, bringing the secret police to the family compound to search their
houses. Gradually, through overheard conversations and the explanations of her
older sister, Lucinda, she comes to understand that her father and uncles are
involved in a plot to kill El Jefe, the dictator, and that they are all in
deadly peril. Anita's story is universal in its implications--she even keeps
an Anne Frank-like diary when she and her mother must hide in a friend's
house--and a tribute to those brave souls who feel, like Anita's father, that
"life without freedom is no life at all." (Ages 10 to 14) --Patty
Campbell --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Publishers Weekly :
In her first YA novel, Alvarez (How the Garc¡a Girls Lost Their Accents)
proves as gifted at writing for adolescents as she is for adults. Here she
brings her warmth, sensitivity and eye for detail to a volatile setting the
Dominican Republic of her childhood, during the 1960-1961 attempt to overthrow
Trujillo's dictatorship. The story opens as 12-year-old narrator Anita watches
her cousins, the Garc¡a girls, abruptly leave for the U.S. with their
parents; Anita's own immediate family are now the only ones occupying the
extended family's compound. Alvarez relays the terrors of the Trujillo regime
in a muted but unmistakable tone; for a while, Anita's parents protect her
(and, by extension, readers), both from the ruler's criminal and even
murderous ways and also from knowledge of their involvement in the planned
coup d'‚tat. The perspective remains securely Anita's, and Alvarez's
pitch-perfect narration will immerse readers in Anita's world. Her crush on
the American boy next door is at first as important as knowing that the maid
is almost certainly working for the secret police and spying on them; later,
as Anita understands the implications of the adult remarks she overhears, her
voice becomes anxious and the tension mounts. When the revolution fails,
Anita's father and uncle are immediately arrested, and she and her mother go
underground, living in secret in their friends' bedroom closet a sequence the
author renders with palpable suspense. Alvarez conveys the hopeful ending with
as much passion as suffuses the tragedies that precede it. A stirring work of
art. Ages 12-up.
School Library
Journal : Grade 6-10-By the morning of her 12th birthday, in December, 1960,
Anita de la Torre's comfortable childhood in her home in the Dominican
Republic is a thing of the past. The political situation for opponents of the
dictator Rafael Trujillo has become so dangerous that nearly all of her
relatives have emigrated to the U.S., leaving only her uncle, T'o Toni,
somewhere in hiding, and her parents, still determined to carry on the
resistance. Over the next year, the girl becomes increasingly aware of the
nature of the political situation and her family's activities. Once her
father's cotorrita, or talkative parrot, she grows increasingly silent. When
the dictator is assassinated, her father and uncle are arrested, her older
brother is sheltered in the Italian Embassy, and Anita and her mother must go
into hiding as well. Diary entries written by the child while in hiding will
remind readers of Anne Frank's story. They will find Anita's interest in boys
and her concerns about her appearance, even when she and her mother can see no
one, entirely believable. Readers will be convinced by the voice of this
Spanish-speaking teenager who tells her story entirely in the present tense.
Like Anita's brother Mund'n, readers will bite their nails as the story moves
to its inexorable conclusion.
Booklist : Gr. 7-10. What is it like for a 12-year-old girl living under a ruthless dictatorship in the Dominican Republic in 1960? Alvarez draws on her own cousins' and friends' experiences to tell the political story through the eyes of Anita, whose father is involved in a plot to assassinate the dictator and bring democracy to the island. This doesn't have the passionate lyricism of Alvarez's great adult novels. The pace, at least for the first half of the book, is very slow, perhaps because the first-person, present-tense narrative stays true to Anita's bewildered viewpoint and is weighed down with daily detail and explanation of the political issues ("I feel just awful that my father has to kill someone for us to be free"). Yet it is Anita's innocence, her focus on the ordinary, that young readers will recognize. She's busy with school, friends, getting her period, falling in love, even as the secrets and spies come closer and, finally, the terror destroys her home. Her father is arrested; she and her mother are in hiding. There's no sensationalism, but Anita knows the horrific facts of how prisoners are tortured and killed. Trying to block out the truth, she loses her voice, even forgets the words for things, until she starts to write in a secret diary. Readers interested in the history will grab this. Like Lyll Becerra de Jenkins' The Honorable Prison (1988), about a young girl whose father resists a Latin American dictatorship, and Beverley Naidoo's The Other Side of Truth (Booklist' s 2001 Top of the List winner for youth fiction), Alvarez's story will also spark intense discussion about politics and family.
Story
Collection Pura Belpre :