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Serafina's Promise, by Ann E. Burg
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A luminous novel in verse from the author of the Jefferson Cup award winner ALL THE BROKEN PIECES.
Serafina has
a secret dream.
She wants to go to school
and become a doctor
with her best friend, Julie Marie.
But in their rural village
outside Port-au-Prince, Haiti,
many obstacles
stand in Serafina’s way--
little money,
never-ending chores,
and Manman’s worries.
More powerful even
than all of these
are the heavy rains
and the shaking earth
that test Serafina’s resolve
in ways she never dreamed.
At once heartbreaking and hopeful,
this exquisitely crafted story
will leave a lasting impression
on your heart.
- Sales Rank: #179227 in eBooks
- Published on: 2013-09-24
- Released on: 2013-09-24
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Booklist
Serafina is an 11-year-old Haitian struggling to keep her dream of becoming a doctor alive. Living in a desolate mountain village, Serafina toils at her daily chores while planning to attend school in the requisite uniform and shoes. Serafina has a warm family, a true friend in Julie Marie, and an encouraging woman doctor, who all come to support her vision. Then a flood washes away the family home, and the roaring stampede of an earthquake devastates the city of Port-au-Prince, where Serafina’s father works and Julie Marie lives. In this novel in verse, the author of the acclaimed All the Broken Pieces (2009) uses a lush narrative bouquet, filled with blooms of quiet verse, rhythmic Creole, and Haitian proverbs and sayings that capture life’s poignancy and hardships, including a message that Serafina has learned from an early age: “If you want your eggs to hatch, sit on them yourself.” In Burg’s lyrical tale, Serafina is a force of nature in her own right who carries her family, friends, and dreams to safe ground. Grades 5-8. --Gail Bush
Review
Praise and Reviews for ALL THE BROKEN PIECES:
Jefferson Cup award winner
BOOKLIST Editors' Choice
ALA Best Books for Young Adults
IRA Notable Book for a Global Society
ALA Popular Paperback for Young Adults
*"[A] stirring debut novel . . . will make readers want to rush to the end and then return to the beginning again to make connections between past, present, friends and enemies."--BOOKLIST, starred review
*"The verse form carries highly charged emotions and heavy content with elegiac simplicity."--KIRKUS, starred review
*"Using spare free verse, first-time novelist Burg beautifully evokes the emotions of a Vietnamese adoptee as he struggles to come to terms with his past."--PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, starred review
"...the story is a lovely, moving one."--SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL
"Eleven-year-old Serafina has a dream: to go to school and become a doctor. Yet her life outside of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, is filled with urgent chores and responsibilities.
A natural healer, Serafina has already witnessed the loss of baby brother Pierre to disease and hunger, wishing she could have done more to save him. Now Manman is about to have another baby. How will her family ever do without Serafina’s help or afford her school uniform? Burg uses gentle language and graceful imagery to create the characters that make up Serafina’s loving family—Papa, Manman and Gogo, her wise grandmother. (Sadly, Granpè was taken away long ago by the Tonton Macoutes.) Told in first-person verse appealing to both reluctant and passionate readers, the novel is woven with Haitian history, culture and Creole phrases. Readers will root for this likable heroine as she overcomes obstacles—poverty, family obligations, the catastrophic 2010 earthquake—in her effort to emulate her mentor, Antoinette Solaine, the physician who tried to save Pierre. The spirit of the text’s celebration of the power of determination, family, friendship and love is ably captured in Sean Quall’s delightful cover art.
Lilting, lyrical and full of hope." - Kirkus starred review
About the Author
Ann Burg's debut novel, ALL THE BROKEN PIECES, was named a Jefferson Cup award winner and an IRA Notable Book for a Global Society, among its many honors. Burg worked as an English teacher for ten years before becoming a full-time writer. She lives in Rhinebeck, New York, with her family. You can visit her online at www.annburg.com
Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
An inspiring story about following one's heart.
By Heidi Grange
Serafina, a young Haitian girl, wants more than anything to go to school to become a doctor. But her dream seems impossible when she has to spend all day doing chores to help her mother who is about to have another baby. It was the loss of a previous baby and the efforts of a female doctor to prevent it that have inspired Serafina to want to be a doctor. But everything seems to be preventing Serafina from even pursuing her dream: natural disasters, lack of money, and unending chores. Can Serafina find a way to survive and pursue her dream?
Not only is the poetry beautifully written but it's surprisingly evocative as well. One of the things that verse can do so well is express the feelings of the characters and Burg does a fabulous job of this. I really felt like I knew Serafina and her dreams and worries, heartaches and joys. In a relatively few words, I also found myself sympathizing with Serafina's parents; Manman who worries so much and Papa, who works so hard to provide for his family and still finds reasons to smile. The characterization is beautifully and tenderly presented.
In terms of plot, the story is appealing to me because it highlights the value of an education. Ironically, it also portrays the fact that sometimes when we get what we want, it isn't always what we thought it would be and yet it's the only way to get to where we want to go. The presentation of the natural disasters is thoughtfully and powerfully done despite the sparse use of words, I got a distinct feel for the circumstances Serafina and her family found themselves in. Not that there is any real way to understand what that's like without being there, but this comes close.
Overall, a beautifully written and presented story about dreams and overcoming the odds. The only problem I foresee here is the format. Most children won't pick up free verse stories, still if one or two will pick it up I think they will be well rewarded for their efforts.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Using Serafina's Promise in the Classroom
By Vamos a Leer
Burg’s novel-in-verse is perfect for younger students. As we’ve said with almost every novel-in-verse we’ve read for Vamos a Leer, this is a great format for developing, struggling, or hesitant readers. All of the white space on each page keeps readers from being overwhelmed. The dialogue is simple which minimizes any frustration for a reader trying to track who is talking. But it’s not just the genre that makes is a good choice for younger students. Haiti’s history is both traumatic and violent, some of which continues to manifest in the present. For those of you familiar with other young adult novels like Krik? Krak! and In Darkness, Serafina’s Promise may seem like a fairy tale version of life in Haiti. While Burg alludes to the traumatic history, it’s not nearly as explicit as in some of the other above-mentioned young adult novels. While this can certainly be a critique of the book, I also think that this is one of the reasons it can be useful in the classroom. Novels like In Darkness and Krik? Krak! are excellent resources for both the teaching of quality writing and realistic portrayals of life in Haiti. But we can’t use these books with our elementary school students. For most of these students, even if the reading level isn’t too advanced or the books are used as read alouds, the themes aren’t appropriate. Burg provides a novel about Haiti that we can use with younger students. She allows us to introduce these students to Haiti so that they can learn about a country rarely mentioned in our classrooms and begin to think about what life might be like there.
One of the more powerful pieces of the novel is in the experience the reader can have in comparing his or her life with that of Serafina. Serafina’s circumstances are so different from what many of our students are familiar with in the U.S. Things that many of us take for granted in our daily lives in the U.S., are not remotely available to Serafina, her family, or her neighbors. While our education system in the U.S. is anything but perfect, schooling is available for everyone. It’s important for our students to realize that education is not a guarantee in other countries. In Haiti the cost of an education is something that many cannot afford. Students need to reflect on what the ramifications are when a country doesn’t provide education for its entire population. What does it mean if many are left illiterate? How does the lack of an education affect the quality of one’s life? Would our students work as hard as Serafina does in order for the chance to go to school? While Serafina’s childhood will be difficult, if not impossible, for many of our students to truly grasp, it’s important that they try. They need to imagine a life without TVs, video games, cell phones, electricity, or even running water.
A more universal theme in the novel may be the family dynamics and relationships. While Serafina is close to both her father and her grandmother, she struggles to connect with her mother. Relationships, especially those with family members, can be complex. As Serafina realizes, some of her inability to understand her mother is related to her mother’s fearfulness and anxiety that comes from her own traumatic childhood experiences. A discussion around the nature of the family’s relationships in the novel can provide the space for students to think about and possibly share connections that they see to their own lives. I also really appreciated the way Burg wove in explicit discussions of emotions. As I’ve talked about before, emotions are something that we discuss far too little in our classrooms, especially when we consider how much they influence the ways in which we process our experiences. Serafina experiences a wide range of emotions. Burg addresses not only the positive ones such as happiness, joy, and hopefulness, but also the ones we are less likely to address in classroom discussions such as anger, frustration, and jealousy. I found her use of “angry bees” to be a potentially powerful way to model for students one way to process emotions through creating a metaphor to describe the way their emotions make them feel.
While Burg may not explicitly address the more violent aspects of historical and contemporary life in Haiti, she does allude to these things, which provides the teacher the opportunity to delve deeper. Serafina’s struggle to understand why they learn French instead of Creole in school is one example of this. Serafina knows that the French conquered Haiti, and she questions why they continue to learn in the language of their conquerors instead of Creole, the language the majority of people speak. This creates a way to open up a discussion about conquest and colonization and the contemporary ways in which people continue to be colonized.
While it may not be as realistic as other young adult novels set in Haiti, it’s still a novel I’d recommend for the classroom. Not only does it provide an age appropriate introduction to Haiti, but it does this through a strong protagonist who is a female of color, something that is sadly still lacking in much of our classroom literature. In the end, Serafina’s Promise is a message of hope in contrast to the harsh reality of life in Haiti.
Our free educator’s guide is available on our wordpress blog Vamos a Leer.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Hopeful . . .
By Librarian
Serafina lives in poverty stricken villages outside of Port-au-Prince, trying to fulfill a promise to herself and to her long-gone Grandpere to go to school. Her Grandpere believed "education is the road to freedom". Her goal is to become a Doctor one day, like Antionette Solaine, and help her Maman's babies live. Serafina struggles not only to live, but to find the money needed for her to attend school and to convince her Maman that she should go. With a small herb garden which her Gogo helps her with, and her father's persuasive skills put to work on her Maman, Serfaina starts school. She sees her name written for the first time, "I trace the loops and lines with my fingers. Serafina. My name. My beautiful, beautiful name". Hope and hardship go hand in hand. Serafina plays with Julie-Marie and Nadia and sneaks scarce food to Banza, the stray dog of their village. Yet Nadia's ability to attend school leads to jealousy and bitterness. Then Serafina loses Julie-Marie's cheerful outlook when her friend is sent to live with relatives after tragedy strikes. The birth of her brother Gregory provides their family with joy, but when the baby takes ill Serafina fears it is her selfish desire to attend school and the money it costs, which keeps him from receiving the care he needs. Serafina's attempts to help are shaken up by a natural disaster where her hope and determination lead her back to her loved ones. Written in lilting, lyrical verse sprinkled with French and Haitian Creole giving it the flavor and rhythm of island life, Serafania's story shines with promise as she tries to pursue her dreams. The political background of Haiti is touched on briefly in a discussion about the Tonton Macoute. A glossary of foreign terms and phrases is provided along with a Haitian Creole pronunciation guide.
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