Mexique: A Refugee Story from the Spanish Civil War

by María José Ferrada (Author) Ana Penyas (Illustrator)

Mexique: A Refugee Story from the Spanish Civil War
Reading Level: 2nd − 3rd Grade

On May 27, 1937, over four hundred children sailed for Morelia, Mexico, fleeing the violence of the Spanish Civil War. Home was no longer safe, and Mexico was welcoming refugees by the thousands. Each child packed a suitcase and boarded the Mexique, expecting to return home in a few months. This was just a short trip, an extra-long summer vacation, they thought. But the war did not end in a few months, and the children stayed, waiting and wondering, in Mexico. When the war finally ended, a dictator--the Fascist Francisco Franco--ruled Spain. Home was even more dangerous than before.

This moving book invites readers onto the Mexique with the "children of Morelia," many of whom never returned to Spain during Franco's almost forty-year regime. Poignant and poetically told, Mexique opens important conversations about hope, resilience, and the lives of displaced people in the past and today.

Select format:
Hardcover
$17.99

Publishers Weekly

"Three or four months./ Like summer vacation, only longer." That is what the narrator's parents say when a child is placed on the Mexique, a ship bound for the Mexican city of Morelia during the Spanish Civil War. Working in a somber palette of black and white with accents of faded red, illustrator Penyas draws in childlike art, sometimes over photographed images of the 456 children aboard, "all children of Spanish Republicans," with expressive strokes and smudges. On board, older children minister to younger ("sisters/ we didn't have before"). Ferrada (Tweet!) creates powerful metaphors ("War is a huge hand that shakes you/ and throws you onto a ship") and expresses the children's realization when they arrive in Mexico: "We think that the war stayed behind. But it's not true--we bring the war in our suitcases." The story ends there, but journalist Ferrada's detailed afterword tells the grim truth: safer in Mexico throughout the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, many of the children never went home. It's a sobering contribution to the history of Spanish-speaking people in North America, and a memorial to a little-known group of refugees. Ages 7-10. (Oct.)

Copyright 2020 Publishers Weekly, LLC Used with permission.
María José Ferrada
María José Ferrada is a Chilean journalist and writer. She is a recipient of the Municipal Prize of Literature of Santiago, as well as the Academy Award from the Chilean Academy of Language. In 2018 she received the Hispanic-American Prize for poetry for children. She currently works as the children's editor of Chilean Memory, a digital resource center of the National Library of Chile.

Ana Penyas has a degree in fine arts from the Polytechnic University of Valencia. In 2018, she was the first woman to win Spain's National Comic Award. She has also received the Josep Toutain Prize for Best New Talent at the International Comic Fair of Barcelona.

Raised in Valencia, she now lives in Madrid. Visit Ana's website at anapenyas.es or follow her on Instagram @ana_penyas.
Classification
Fiction
ISBN-13
9780802855459
Lexile Measure
500
Guided Reading Level
-
Publisher
Eerdmans Books for Young Readers
Publication date
October 20, 2020
Series
-
BISAC categories
JUV016080 - Juvenile Fiction | Historical | Military & Wars
JUV039250 - Juvenile Fiction | Social Themes | Emigration & Immigration
JUV039180 - Juvenile Fiction | Social Themes | Violence
Library of Congress categories
History
Mexico
Refugees
Refugee children
Spain
Unaccompanied refugee children
Civil War, 1936-1939
1910-1946

Subscribe to our delicious e-newsletter!