Grant recommends the children’s book Dreams of Green: A Three Kings’ Day Story written by Mariel Jungkunz and illustrated by Mónica Paola Rodriguez (Bookshop|Amazon), about a girl and her family who move from Puerto Rico to Ohio and find ways to carry on their traditions. It’s also available in Spanish: El Verde De Mis Sueños: Un Cuento De La Tradición De Los Tres Reyes Magos (Bookshop|Amazon). Also, the popular Maisie Dobbs series of 18 novels by Jaqueline Winspear follows the adventures of a young, working-class British woman who in 1929 becomes a private investigator (Bookshop|Amazon). This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Sueños of Green in the Snows of Ohio”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.
I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
Earlier in the show, I recommended a kid’s book called The Dictionary Story.
And Grant, I’m wondering, what have you been reading lately?
Well, it’s a wonderful book by the writer Mariel Young-Kunz. That’s J-U-N-G-K-U-N-Z. And it’s called Dreams of Green, A Three Kings Day Story.
And this is about a young Puerto Rican girl who moves from the lovely island to snowy Ohio.
And when Three Kings Day comes around, which is about 11 days after Christmas, she misses a lot of the Dia de los Reyes celebrations that she knew back home.
The prandas, which are a kind of Christmas carol and food. And she has to reconcile these two different parts of herself, these two different traditions being Puerto Rican and yet in a part of the world where they don’t know her holiday.
And it’s a lovely book. You can actually buy it in both English and Spanish. The Spanish is El Vede de Mis Sueños. And it’s about Puerto Rican culture and trying to fit in.
And it’s targeted at young readers. And it adds another way to celebrate the holidays. It’s a piece of Puerto Rico. And it feels very warm and welcoming.
But for an older audience, maybe teens and higher, I just finished the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear. And this is an 18 novel series that follows a young woman from the age of 13, right before World War I, through her becoming a battlefield nurse, a woman of means, and above all, a private investigator and psychologist until after the end of World War II.
The character Maisie starts her journey as a young working class woman who enters service as a maid in a wealthy London household. There she is discovered late at night reading in her employer’s library and trying to teach herself Latin.
But instead of getting in trouble and being fired for breaching this protocol, her employers arranged for her to be tutored by a family friend and psychologist who is also a bit of a detective. And through her studies with him, she learns traditional academics and the observational and psychological skills that laid foundation for her to be a great investigator.
So this book series is set against the backdrop of two world wars and the Spanish Civil War. It has a lot of societal and psychological conflict, but also it’s very personal. It’s about her growth as an individual and about the setbacks and advances that we all have.
And I really loved this series and just tore through all 18 books. And so this is the Maisie Dobbs, that’s M-A-I-S-I-E Dobbs, D-O-B-B-S series by Jacqueline Winspear, W-I-N-S-P-E-A-R.
And the book I mentioned earlier is Dreams of Green, a Three Kings Day story. It’s by the writer Mario Young Kunz. That’s J-U-N-G-K-U-N-Z. And you can also find it in Spanish as El Verde de Mis Sueños.
We’ll link to both of those on our website at waywordradio.org.
Grant, both of those sound wonderful. I’m adding them to my reading list right now.
Absolutely. And Martha and I love it when you send us recommendations for your books. What have you been reading? What do you think that we should add to our shelves?
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