22 February 2009 RETURN TO SENDER by Julia Alvarez, Knopf, January 2009, 325p., ISBN: 978-0-375-85838-3

"Mr. Neck writes on the board again: 'DEBATE: America should have closed her borders in 1900.' That strikes a nerve. Several nerves. I can see kids counting backward on their fingers, trying to figure when their grandparents or great-grandparents were born, when they came to America, if they would have made the Neck Cut. When they figure out they would have been stuck in a country that hated them, or a place with no schools, or a place with no future, their hands shoot up. They beg to differ with Mr. Neck's learned opinion."

-- from SPEAK by 2009 Margaret A. Edwards Award winner Laurie Halse Anderson

"Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do" -- John Lennon

"Wade into the river

Through the rippling shallow water

Steal across the thirsty border

Bracero" -- Phil Ochs

"That night, Tyler lugs his telescope out to the barn. Whenever he's feeling upset, it helps to look up at what Gramps used to call the bigger picture. In the hayloft, away from the lights of the house, Tyler can see the sky more clearly. And away from his parents and the sounds of their conversations and phone calls and TV programs, he can think more clearly, too."

To the parents of eleven-year-old Tyler Paquette, the family of Mexican workers who have come to live in the trailer on their Vermont dairy farm are angels.

Tyler had actually seen the tractor roll over, trapping his father underneath. He's had horrible nightmares about it ever since. If Tyler had not been there to call 9-1-1, his father wouldn't be alive today. Nevertheless, his father may never recover the full use of his arm and leg and -- given that Tyler's big brother is heading off to college at the end of the summer and his teenage sister is about as likely to help with the cows as my teenage daughter is to help me tend to my dairy goats (NOT!) -- it had been looking like Tyler might never have the opportunity to grow up to become a fifth-generation Vermont family farmer.

"I remember the fear of serpents, the sharp rocks, the lights of la migra. And always, the terrible thirst...I am not sure even this paper can hold such terrifying memories."

Mari is Tyler's age. She is an illegal alien. She has arrived on a bus from North Carolina with her illegal alien father, her two illegal alien uncles, and her two little sisters who were born in North Carolina. Last winter Mari's mom suddenly returned to their homeland in southern Mexico because her mother -- Mari's Abulita -- was dying. Now the family has lost contact with Mama who is hopefully still alive and presumably still trying to sneak across the border and return to North Carolina.

Fearing potential repercussions, Mari's father has persuaded her not to try to actually mail any of the long letters that she has been writing to Mama. But how, then, might the family ever become reunited?

"That is why I am writing, Mama. Not only to tell you where we are moving to, but also because I have nowhere else to put the things that are in my heart. As you always used to tell Papa when he found you writing letters, or just writing in a notebook, 'El papel lo aguanta todo.' Paper can hold anything. Sorrows that might otherwise break your heart. Joys with wings that lift you above the sad things in your life."

Told from the perspectives of Tyler and Mari -- two sixth graders living on a dairy farm in small town Vermont in 2005 -- RETURN TO SENDER is a story of families and hope and opportunities offered by the country I love and am sometimes so proud of -- and opportunities withheld by the country I often haven't understood and have sometimes been embarrassed by.

Why is it that it is a crime for one of these sixth graders to have been born in Mexico? How will it affect things for Tyler to be classmates with Mari, to be in the position of knowing Mari is an illegal alien and -- at the same time -- to recognize that his future as a farmer is so dependent on keeping knowledge of that legal status well hidden? When is it okay -- even admirable -- to participate in breaking laws and when have American heroes participated in doing so?

On the lighter side, RETURN TO SENDER frequently plays with language -- illustrating repeatedly how literal translations of English to Spanish or Spanish to English can lead to amusing misunderstandings.

Just in the past couple of weeks, I have perceived a heightening of fear-based anger related to the economic woes facing so many of us. During an era of panic and fear, a book that so vividly and lovingly illustrates how diverse families are far more similar than they are are different is particularly welcome and essential.

Richie Partington, MLIS

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