[Saturday Reads] The Revolutionary Power Of Unvoiced Wishes

Myra here.

Every Saturday we hope to share with you our thoughts on reading and books. We thought that it would be good practice to reflect on our reading lives and our thoughts about reading in general. While on occasion, we would feature a few books in keeping with this, there would be a few posts where we will just write about our thoughts on read-alouds, libraries, reading journals, upcoming literary conferences, books that we are excited about, and just book love miscellany in general.

I have heard of this book for quite awhile now, and I was beyond excited to find it on Overdrive.

Carmela Full Of Wishes [Amazon | Book Depository]

Written by Matt De La Peña Illustrated by Christian Robinson
Published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers (2018)
ISBN: 0399549048 (ISBN13: 9780399549045). Literary Award: Charlotte Zolotow Award Nominee for Highly Commended (2019). Borrowed from NLB Overdrive. Book photos taken by me.

It is Carmela’s birthday and as the title indicates, she is indeed full of wishes. When she blew out the candles from her birthday pancake in the morning, however, she felt that her wish had already come true. It was a fairly simple wish – to be old enough to accompany her brother as he does the family chores around their neighborhood.

While the story deals with themes of immigration, securing proper documentation, poverty – they never surfaced as the primary themes in the story, but more as a keenly felt backstory providing nuance to the siblings’ quiet bickering and annoyance at being forced to spend time with each other (at least from the brother’s point of view).

Throughout the narrative, it is clear how the brother is annoyed by the jingle-jangle of Carmela’s bracelets. He would take pains to prove that he knows much more than Carmela, pointing out that blowing dandelion puffs in the air should be accompanied by wishes and that “everybody knows that.”

Everything about this story rings true, from the little clues left here and there about the family’s situation to the detailed depiction of the city that seemed to hum with its own voice, yet it is the siblings’ relationship that shone through the brightest.

What I especially loved about the story is its subtlety – there were plenty of spaces for the reader to breathe in the narrative, to find and lose themselves in it. And yes, the revolutionary power of blowing wishes into the air in a world that discourages dreaming for certain groups of people. I now understand why this book received all the love when it first came out. Beautiful book.