Enrique's Journey: The True Story of a Boy Determined to Reunite with His Mother

Gr 7 Up—When Enrique was seven years old, his mother, a single parent faced with crippling economic difficulties in her native Honduras, migrated to the United States in hopes of securing a brighter future for her family. While her sacrifice provided important economic advantages, the separation eventually drove 17-year-old Enrique to embark on a four-month, 12,000 mile journey to reunite with her, traveling largely on the rooftops of trains into the United States as an undocumented migrant. In this updated version of Enrique's Journey (Random, 2006), adapted for young adult readers, Nazario offers a compelling account of a young man's brave efforts to find the parent he had not seen in 10 years, and that reunion's complex, unforeseen consequences. The journey tells the larger story of undocumented Latin American migrants in the United States. This adaptation has been tightened to focus more on Enrique's personal story, although some unflattering details (including drug use and problems with the law) have been slightly smoothed over. Nazario's straightforward, almost clipped, journalistic writing style largely serves the complex, sprawling story effectively. Backmatter includes an afterword offering substantial analysis of issues at play with undocumented migrants and notes detailing Nazario's research and writing process, including the re-creation of certain dialogue. Exploring important issues of immigration on both a personal and global scale, this title would be a valuable addition to young adult collections.—Ted McCoy, Oakland Public Library, CA