The Wild Book by Ms Margarita Engle

The Wild Book by Ms Margarita Engle

"The idea of a wild book on which to let words sprout is one that should speak to those with reading difficulties and to aspiring poets as well." --School Library Journal

Fefa struggles with words. She has word blindness, or dyslexia, and the doctor says she will never read or write. Every time she tries, the letters jumble and spill off the page, leaping away like bullfrogs. How will she ever understand them?

But her mother has an idea. She gives Fefa a blank book filled with clean white pages. "Think of it as a garden," she says.

Soon Fefa starts to sprinkle words across the pages of her wild book. She lets her words sprout like seedlings, shaky at first, then growing stronger and surer with each new day. And when her family is threatened, it is what Fefa has learned from her wild book that saves them.

This glowing portrait in verse of Margarita Engle's Cuban grandmother as a young girl struggling with dyslexia is not to be missed.

Margarita Engle is a Cuban-American poet, novelist, and journalist whose work has appeared in a variety of publications around the world. She is the author of The Surrender Tree, a Newbery Honor Book, The Poet Slave of Cuba, The Firefly Letters, and Tropical Secrets, among other young adult nonfiction and verse novels. She resides in the state of California's northwestern region.