Enrique's Journey (The Young Adult Adaptation)
Age Range: 12 and up
Age Range: 12 and up
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Published on Aug 27, 2013 | 288 Pages
Published on Aug 27, 2013 | 288 Pages
In this bestselling true story, one Honduran boy goes in search of his mother, who left to find work in the United States ten years ago—when he was just seven years old.
This is the true and heartbreaking story of sixteen-year-old Enrique, who sets off on a journey alone to find his mother, who he has not seen for eleven years, not since she left her starving family and illegally entered the United States, hoping to make enough money to send home to Honduras.
With little more in his pocket than a slip of paper bearing his mother’s phone number, Enrique embarks on a treacherous odyssey, traveling by clinging to the sides and tops of freight trains. Even when confronted by bandits, thugs, and corrupt cops, he is determined to complete his journey, often buoyed by the kindness of strangers or simply by luck finding water or food. In the face of this hostile world, Enrique’s love for his mother and his desire to be reunited with her endure and triumph.
Enrique’s journey tells the larger story of undocumented Latin American migrants in the United States. His is an inspiring and timeless tale about the meaning of family and fortitude that brings to light the daily struggles of migrants, legal and otherwise, and the complicated choices they face. The issues seamlessly interwoven into this gripping nonfiction work for young people, based on the adult phenomenon Enrique’s Journey: The Story of a Boy’s Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite with His Mother and the Pulitzer Price-winning Los Angeles Times newspaper series that inspired it, are perfect for common core usage and for discussions of current events.
Includes an 8-page photo insert, as well as an epilogue that describes what has happened to Enrique and his family since the adult edition was published.
Praise for Enrique’s Journey
“A heartwrenching account. Provides a human face, both beautiful and scarred, for the undocumented. A must read.” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred
“This powerfully written survival story personalizes the complicated, pervasive, and heart-wrenching debates about immigration and immigrants’ rights and will certainly spark discussion in the classroom and at home.”—Booklist
Author
Sonia Nazario
Sonia Nazario has spent 20 years reporting and writing about social issues, most recently as a projects reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Her stories have tackled some of this country’s most intractable problems: hunger, drug addiction, immigration.She has won numerous national journalism and book awards. In 2003, her story of a Honduran boy’s struggle to find his mother in the U.S., entitled “Enrique’s Journey,” won more than a dozen awards, among them the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing, the George Polk Award for International Reporting, the Grand Prize of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and the National Assn. of Hispanic Journalists Guillermo Martinez-Marquez Award for Overall Excellence.Expanded into a book, Enrique’s Journey became a national bestseller and won two book awards. It is now required reading for incoming freshmen at dozens of colleges and high schools across the U.S.In 1998, Nazario was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for a series on children of drug addicted parents. And in 1994, she won a George Polk Award for Local Reporting for a series about hunger among schoolchildren in California.Nazario has been named among the most influential Latinos by Hispanic Business Magazine and a “trendsetter” by Hispanic Magazine.Nazario, who grew up in Kansas and in Argentina, has written extensively from Latin America and about Latinos in the United States. She is now at work on her second book. She began her career at the Wall Street Journal, where she reported from four bureaus: New York, Atlanta, Miami, and Los Angeles. In 1993, she joined the Los Angeles Times. She serves on the advisory boards of the University of North Texas Mayborn Literary Non-fiction Writer’s Conference and of Catch the Next, a non-profit working to double the number of Latinos enrolling in college. She is also on the board of Kids In Need of Defense, a non-profit launched by Microsoft and Angelina Jolie to provide pro-bono attorneys to unaccompanied immigrant children.She is a graduate of Williams College and has a master’s degree in Latin American studies from the University of California, Berkeley. In 2010, Nazario received an honorary doctorate from Mount St. Mary’s College.
Learn More about Sonia Nazario