“Even the people are like a rainbow,” says one. Many recall the Island with fondness: nonstop music, mangoes so sweet “they make you want to cry,” colors of every kind. When her teacher asks everyone to draw a picture of “the country you were originally from, your first country,” Lola, who doesn’t remember the Island herself, embarks on a quest through her tight-knit city neighborhood to collect memories. From its very first sentence, this first picture book from Díaz ( The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao) is both beautifully nuanced and instantly comprehensible: “Every kid in Lola’s school was from somewhere else.” Lola is from a place that she calls the Island, which adult readers will recognize as the author’s native Dominican Republic, but she left as a baby.
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