Wild Dreamers by Margarita Engle
Book in verse
I am trying to read a lot of books in verse as I have a lot of book talks with my classes. I worry that I am running through a few of them too quickly.
This book jumps from three points of view.
Ana lives in a car with her mom. Her mom spends most of her money on lawyers because of her dad. He’s on the FBI’s most wanted list, and they are trying to locate him. When he left them, he also stole their identities. He was able to close their bank accounts and pretty much ruin them.
Leandro who has recently fled Cuba on a raft. He is dealing with a lot of anxiety. It is his fault his family had to flee Cuba. On their trip to America his dad drowned trying to save him.
Cielo the singing dog? Cielo is also Leandro’s service dog. He helps him with his anxiety. It was odd that there were chapters from his point of view at times. Is he more than a service animal?
This book starts with Leandro and Ana meeting in a park. Ana scares away a puma sneaking up behind Leandro and his dog. Later, the two meet again at school, and they both know that there is something special about each other. Together, they start a rewilding program at their school. This is something that I did not know a lot about, and I was glad they explained as much as they could throughout the book.
I learned that it is not good to remove all of the predators (sort of already knew that) because if you get rid of the pumas, the deer have no reason to move from place to place, and they end up eating all of the tree saplings, causing all sorts of problems. I also learned about the breeding issues. If the animals cannot travel (across busy streets) to meet with other packs, they run the risk of inbreeding to the point where they might have fatal side effects in their newborns. (I did not think about that before.)
These two have clearly fallen hard for each other, and they are both pretty amazing teens. They are focused on helping their communities and the world around them and supporting each other. It is a sweet novel. It was a quick read, but at the same time, so much was going on. Leandro was dealing with his fears of the water, and Ana was dealing with all the nonsense around her dad. They were both dealing with everything they wanted to do to help the wildlife around them, and they were dealing with their feelings toward each other. I’m not sure what the main story was: their love, the rewilding project, their individual troubles, or Cielo bringing them together?
I know this is an “it’s me, not the book” type of thing, but I didn’t love how quickly they fell for each other, and I didn’t really understand Cielo’s part. I love dogs, and I love how he helped Leandro as well as helped with wildlife rescue. I just didn’t understand or really believe that he was the one trying to bring them together. Those parts (Cielo’s poems) took me out of the book each time. But it was overall a sweet novel. Maybe I don’t understand poetry all that well, maybe it was more magical realism that I didn’t understand, perhaps I just don’t like insta love. I didn’t hate this book; I just didn’t love it.
Three out of Five Magical Coffee Cups
Literary Coffee 