AWARDS: ALL THE STARS DENIED

AWARDS:

2019 Writers League of Texas Book Award Finalist, Writers’ League of Texas, Austin, TX

2019 Best Young Adult Book Finalist, Texas Institute of Letters

Best Multicultural Children’s Books Of 2018, Center for the Study of Multicultural Children’s Literature, Inglewood, CA

REVIEWS:

A harrowing account of a lesser known episode in the United States’ unseemly history of discriminatory immigration policies. Estrella del Toro is witnessing change all around her Monteseco, TX, community… Samples from Estrella’s notebook, including poems, in the form of eco-poetry, newspaper clippings, telegrams, and unsent letters are featured between chapters…The treatment of Mexicanos and Depression-era rhetoric will ring disturbingly familiar to readers mindful of today’s headlines. –School Library Journal, Starred Review

Beautifully and poetically written, the book includes Spanish words and Mexican-American cultural elements to make it a vividly authentic mirror for some readers and a universally appealing and engaging window for others. Enhanced by excerpts from Estrella’s journal, teens will get lost in the pages of this story and truly feel for the injustice the community faced during this often forgotten chapter of American history. An incredibly relevant story, now more than ever. –Kirkus

Readers interested in history and current events will recognize striking similarities between events in this companion to Shame the Stars (2016) and the separation of refugee children from their parents today. Through Estrella’s eloquent letters to her late grandmother and insightful poetry written in her journal, the sorrow and hardship of the ordeal is brought to light in a unique voice. –Booklist