The Big Read for Little Readers

Tía Isa Wants A Car By Meg Medina Companion Book: Tía Isa is working with her niece to save money to buy a new car, green like the ocean back home, and big enough to drive all their family members to the beach when they too arrive in America. Written by young adult author Meg Medina, this picture book succinctly captures the big dreams harbored by new immigrants, coupled with the loneliness for places and faces left behind. Brown Girl Dreaming By Jaqueline Woodson Companion Book: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston Told in gorgeous, evocative verse, Brown Girl Dreaming is the poetic account of what it was like to grow up African-American during the 1960s and 1970s. Although the timeframe is a few decades after Their Eyes Were Watching God, the two books contain use similarly lyrical language to convey the depressingly persistent struggle and pain of being an African-American woman.