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| Paperback ©2003 | -- |
| Perma-Bound Edition ©2005 | -- |
Indians of Central America. Guatemala. Fiction.
Mayas. Fiction.
Kidnapping. Fiction.
Guatemala. Fiction.
Starred Review Twelve-year-old Rosa remembers only a few things about the home she shared with her loving parents in a Mayan village before she was kidnapped at the age of four. Since then, she has traveled with Uncle, an abusive con artist. After being convinced by a fortune-teller that Rosa will make him rich, Uncle embarks on an obsessive treasure hunt, forcing Rosa to join in his scams for food and money. Rosa hates Uncle's dishonesty and anger, and she feels trapped. Then Uncle consults another fortune-teller, a kind, wise woman who gives Rosa the courage to escape. Uncle remains a dark, mortal threat, though, and his search for riches coincides with Rosa's search for identity. The taut, chilling suspense and search for riches will keep readers flying through the pages. But it's Cameron's beautiful language and Rosa's larger identity quest that make this novel extraordinary. Her poetic words evoke Guatemalan towns and lush forests where the earth smells as if it were singing. Rosa narrates in a voice that sometimes seems to belong to an older, wiser self, but readers will be deeply moved by her intense yearning for security, love, and integrity and her sense of a spiritual world that is felt but never fully known.
Starred Review for Publishers Weekly (Thu Apr 28 00:00:00 CDT 2022)Achieving an almost hypnotic intensity, this taut novel invites readers to sample both savory and bitter flavors of Guatemalan culture as Cameron (<EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">The Secret Life of Amanda K. Woods) creates a melting pot of mixed values, religions and races, where both the pure and not-so-pure of heart have faith in a spirit world. The narrator, a 12-year-old girl, navigates an uncertain, mysterious world; in bits and pieces, the author reveals that Tzunún (Mayan for "hummingbird," which is <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">colibrí in Spanish) was kidnapped at age four, while her family was visiting Guatemala City. In the intervening eight years, Tzunún has wandered from village to village with the man she knows only as "Uncle." Most of her early childhood has slipped from her memory, but she does remember that the "first job" her mother gave her was "to be honest." Cameron's understated prose eloquently expresses the complex, interdependent relationship between Tzunún and her kidnapper, who remain linked even though they feel little affection for each other. Tzunún does not leave Uncle because she is afraid of being alone, and Uncle keeps close watch over Tzunún because a fortuneteller predicted that she will lead him to treasure some day. Tension mounts as Tzunún is pressured to lie, cheat and eventually steal for Uncle. In the end, her strong morality is both a saving grace and a threat to her survival, freeing her from Uncle but putting her in danger of his vengeance. Tzunún's struggle to stay true to herself is moving and suspenseful. If the protagonist's final destiny feels somewhat contrived, her growth is convincing nonetheless. Ages 10-up.<EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC""> (Aug.)
School Library Journal Starred ReviewGr 5-8-Contemporary Guatemala is the setting for this story of 12-year-old Tzun n Chumil (Mayan for "Hummingbird Star"), called Rosa Garcia by the man who supposedly rescued her from abandonment at age four. Rosa and "Uncle" Baltasar travel from place to place, begging for their livelihood as he pretends to be blind. But, despite her dependence on and devotion to him, Rosa is distressed by the dishonesty of their lifestyle and has memories of loving parents. Told by a seer, the Day-Keeper Do-a Celestina, that the child will bring him a treasure, Baltasar takes Rosa to the town of San Sebasti n where he and a friend develop a plan to steal a valuable statue from the town's church. The plot backfires when Rosa's conscience forces her to seek out the priest and reveal their intentions, and the two men are jailed. Rosa runs back to the kindly Day-Keeper, who takes her in and gives her the courage to make a new life for herself. When Uncle escapes, Rosa must confront him and, in a dramatic scene in which he plunges off a cliff, she learns that she was kidnapped. With the help of the Day-Keeper and a scrap of paper found in his wallet, Tzun n is reunited with her parents. Cameron layers her compelling story with vivid descriptions of setting and weaves into the narrative the complexities inherent in the blending of Mayan and ladino cultures and religious practices. This is reflected in the book's title, which is the Spanish translation of Tzun n's name. A well-written and engrossing read.-Marie Orlando, Suffolk Cooperative Library System, Bellport, NY Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Horn Book"Uncle" claims to have found Tzunún, abandoned, when she was four. Now somewhere near twelve, she works as his assistant as he passes bad bills or poses as a blind beggar. Once she makes the choice to leave him, the story's pace quickens. The blending of Spanish and Mayan cultures evokes a present-day Guatemala shaped by myth and war and the syncretism of Christian and traditional beliefs. The tone is serious but not somber.
Kirkus Reviews<p>Twelve-year-old TzunAon barely remembers her life before Uncle, but what she does remember features a loving mother and father. Uncle is far from loving, traipsing her over the Guatemalan countryside and forcing her to assist him in fraudulent and humiliating begging schemes. Life with Uncle is barely a life, but he's the only security she has. His conviction that TzunAon will bring him fortune leads him first to consult a fortune-teller for confirmation and then to force TzunAon to assist in a church robbery. These two encounters force TzunAon to examine herself and finally to reject submission, as she first thwarts the robbery and then flees to live with DoAa Celestina, the fortune-tellera"until the destiny that she shares with Uncle exerts itself. TzunAon is an entirely sympathetic narrator, her heartbreakingly ingenuous voice at turns describing modern-day rural Guatemala, and plumbing her own moral depths with complete believability. Readers will ache with her longing for love and her need to claim her own individual humanity. Painful, beautiful, and ultimately triumphant. (Fiction. 10-14)</p>
Starred Review ALA Booklist (Wed Oct 01 00:00:00 CDT 2003)
Starred Review for Publishers Weekly (Thu Apr 28 00:00:00 CDT 2022)
School Library Journal Starred Review
ALA Notable Book For Children
Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
Horn Book
Kirkus Reviews
National Council For Social Studies Notable Children's Trade
Voice of Youth Advocates
Wilson's Children's Catalog
Wilson's Junior High Catalog
The Valley
Moss and bright grasses glistened around the spring. The earth smelled as if it were singing.
I scooped up water in my hands and drank.
We ate our last pieces of dry bread. I shook the crumbs out of my shawl, folded it into a square, and put it on my head to shade my eyes.
"Let's go, Rosa," Uncle said.
He always called me Rosa. My real name, Tzunœn, was a secret I had almost forgotten.
The road was narrow. We walked on, Uncle carrying our belongings on his back in the black suitcase with the broken zipper. So nothing would fall out, he'd stuffed the suitcase inside a rope bag with a carrying strap. The leather strap went around his forehead and left a mark there.
We were in the Ixil Valley, in the high mountains of Guatemala where it rains a lot and sometimes there's frost in the winter. Beside us was a forest of tall pines with flowers in the sunlit spaces--tiny star-shaped red ones, shaggy purple ones with rough raggedy leaves, and seven-foot-tall yellow daisies. The daisies were my favorite, the way they bent their heads and seemed to smile at me.
There were rocks all around, too--enormous boulders that had tumbled down the mountains in ancient times and got to flatter land and just hit a place where they stuck.
Pinecone seeds sprouted on top of boulders, driving their roots into the rock. They'd cracked some boulders wide open.
The seeds in pinecones are lighter than a grain of sand. Sometimes I'd held them in my hand and blown them away, as if they were fine grains of dust. Yet they had the power deep inside them to split rock. Power silent and invisible, but real as the mountains. What was it? Where did it come from?
I wanted to ask Uncle, but I didn't. He disliked questions. Sometimes for whole days he hardly talked.
Uncle said he was a ladino. That is, he claimed he had some Spanish ancestors way back, as well as Mayan ones--and he said that made him moody and gave him a blood disease. He said his Spanish blood hated his Mayan blood, and his Mayan blood hated his Spanish blood, and they were together in him fighting all the time.
I didn't see how that could be. Blood is blood.
We walked along by pastures where sheep were grazing--white ones and black ones, grown ones and little lambs just learning to walk. I thought they were sweet, but I kept that to myself. Uncle called the people he
didn't like--which was most people--"stinking sheep." I figured that meant he didn't like sheep.
Behind us a pickup tore up the road, the grinding of its motor eating the stillness of the forest. We moved out of the way and it rocked along beside us, drowning the smell of grass and pines in smoke. The driver glanced at us, slowing down to see if we wanted a ride. A lot of passengers were already in the back, holding on tight to an iron frame welded to the pickup bed, but there would have been room for us.
Uncle waved the driver on.
That was one of the hard parts of being with Uncle. I could never tell what he would do. Often he would accept a ride, and at the end, when the driver was collecting money from everybody, he would try to sneak away without paying. Other times, even if he had money, he'd turn a ride down and just keep walking as if he could walk to the end of the world.
He was a fast walker. When I was little and couldn't keep up, he used to get mad and say he would give me away.
My sandals were tight and hurt my feet. I was growing fast. Too fast, Uncle said.
I didn't know exactly how old I was, because I had lost track. Uncle figured I was twelve.
We kept walking, and pretty soon we were standing on a ridge, looking down into a valley where a town was spread out like the flat bottom of a bowl. We could see tile and tin roofs of houses, and a big white church in the center of town.
"Nebaj," Uncle said. It was a place I'd never heard of. He hadn't told me where we were going.
Uncle got out his machete and hacked down a sapling at the side of the road. He trimmed it into a walking stick.
We started the descent to Nebaj, Uncle striding along, swinging the stick. The town had looked close, but the road down was long and winding. We got to a scattering of houses, and the dirt road fixed itself up fancy, just as a person would going to town. It became a street of smooth paving stones, lined with low houses painted in yellows and reds and blues.
The sun was low in the west, and the day was getting cool. We stood in the dark shadow of the houses. I took my shawl off my head and wrapped it around me. Uncle held out his walking stick, and I took hold of one end of it. I had to.
He was starting in on being blind.
I didn't mind so much when he got to a town and turned lame, or deaf and dumb. When he turned blind, that was the worst. He wouldn't tell me which way to go. But if I went the wrong way, he would get mad and poke at me with the stick.
"To the church," he said.
I guessed which way it was and walked ahead of him. Uncle followed, holding the other end of his walking stick, his chin raised high and a dead look in his eyes.
One day, we were in a town where I saw a girl helping her father, who was really blind, but you could hardly tell it.
Excerpted from Colibri by Ann Cameron
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
When Tzunún was little, her mother nicknamed her Colibrí, Spanish for “hummingbird.” At age four, Colibrí is kidnapped from her parents in Guatemala City and ever since she’s traveled with Uncle, the ex-soldier and wandering beggar, who renamed her Rosa. Uncle told Rosa that he looked for her parents, but never found them.