Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo (review)
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo
Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-06-288276-9 $18.99
E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-06-288278-3 $11.99
Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 8-12
When an airplane headed to the Dominican Republic from New York crashes with no survivors, both Camino, who lives in the Dominican Republic, and Yahaira, who lives in New York, are devastated: they both lost a father. As the joint narration in this verse novel unfolds, it becomes clear that Camino has yearned for the life in the United States that her father enjoys most of the year and wishes to become a doctor, and that Yahaira has been furious over her father’s secret deception involving the time he spends in the DR. Eventually the girls realize they share the same father, who had bigamously married Camino’s now-late mother (a friend of Yahaira’s mother), and the half-sisters explore their relationship with wariness and jealousy but also joy at finding an unexpected part of their father still left to them. Acevedo (Poet X, BCCB 3/18) takes this story much deeper than the melodramatic premise, allowing for serious exploration of grief, love, and family ties. While the girls’ voices aren’t always distinct, they’re each compelling characters: Yahaira with her stubbornness but also her adoration of her girlfriend, who’s literally the girl next door, and Camino with her hard work and commitment to health care, learned from her aunt. The book is blunt about the financial disparity between the girls and its implications, but it’s also tender as the two families, or what’s left of them, [End Page 386] come together in the Dominican Republic to bury the girls’ father and, despite hurt and betrayal, find connections.
