Hear My Voice/Escucha mi voz

May 21, 2021
Grades 4-7 This compilation, written "by children for children," hauntingly illustrates the trauma endured at border detention centers--specifically at the Clint Border Patrol facility in Texas--and envisions the pilgrimage these children and their families made to pursue safety in the unwelcoming land of American Dreams. In prose accessible to young readers, the book explores the separation, desperation, and disillusionment experienced on these journeys. In two languages--reading in English from one direction and in Spanish from the other direction--it recounts heart-wrenching danger and mistreatment, depicting danger in home countries as a faceless, many-toothed monster reaching out to grab fleeing families, beautiful bird-headed creatures discussing their homelands, and teenage mothers and children parenting other children out of the need for survival. While the anonymity of each child is preserved, their testimonies ring loud and clear on the page, brought to life by 17 different Latinx artists. This collection gives voices and faces to the "children in cages" so often referenced--and yet not discussed enough.

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Starred review from December 3, 2021

Gr 1-5-If you haven't given much thought to the children in the camps at the U.S. border, Binford is about to get your attention. She gave 61 children from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Ecuador, and Mexico a chance to talk about their torturous conditions, their dreams, and their lives, shown in striking but brutal illustrations by 17 Latinx artists, including Yuyi Morales and Ra�l the Third. There is no privacy for using the toilet. The food is welcome for fighting off pangs of hunger, but it is all but inedible. Siblings are separated. Reading like a tone poem or a moan for help, the spare text asks readers to fill in the details. VERDICT Listen to the children, who have no political gain. This is a book readers cannot ignore, and which belongs on every shelf.-Kimberly Olson Fakih

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Starred review from March 15, 2021
In Spanish and in English, a devastating first-person account of children's experiences in detention at the southern U.S. border. The nightmare children have faced while separated from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years is detailed unsparingly via interview snippets from 61 migrant children ages 5 to 17. The words are interpreted by 17 different Latinx illustrators. While some of the artists build fantasy imagery, depicting the children as caged birds or representing escape from a dangerous country as flight from a terrifying monster, the most affecting double-page spreads simply detail the horrifying living conditions and allow expressions on faces to do the rest. Hunger, overcrowding, verbal abuse, and unsanitary conditions are only part of the horrors. "I have been here without bathing for twenty-one days," one child says from behind chain-link fencing. "I wish I could get clean." The Spanish-language version is bound dos-�-dos to the English one, and the children's words are even more painful in their native language. Additional context on how the stories were captured and the legal issues around child detention is provided in a foreword and backmatter; it reinforces the impossible and cruel situation the migrant children have faced and their misplaced hope in a system that has failed them. It's the kind of terrifying book that no adult should hand to a child before preparing to explain, with context, that the stories are true and that they must be remembered. A powerful, critical document only made more heartbreaking in picture-book form. (Picture book. 8-18)

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