A Jungle Full of Adventure

Can you imagine your family taking you to the Yucatan for the summer?! Now what if that trip meant you would miss the one opportunity you had to go to the mini-camp the most popular girl in your class invited you too... Would you still want to go? In Jungle Crossing by Sydney Salter, a summer in Mexico is the last thing Kat wants to do for the summer.


Kat doesn't want to go to Mexico and eat probably contaminated food and possibly get kidnapped by bandits and most likely end up lost in the jungle forever. But she doesn't have much of a choice when her father takes the whole family back to the place he traveled to when he was young. Everything from her annoying little sister Barbara to the rude Mayan tour guide Nando makes Kat angry. She is missing Fiona's mini-camp back home which is the key to not being a social pariah for the entire 8th grade. When her mother signs her and Barbara up for a kids-only tour, Kat finds herself just where she expects to be when she returns home- as the loser of the group everyone makes fun of.


On the days-long tour, Nando clearly expresses his annoyance with all tourists and all Americans. Kat doesn't understand why he is so grumpy all the time. Barbara, in all her childish innocence, coaxes Nando into telling a story about the ancient Mayans he comes from. He begins to tell the story of a Mayan princess who was captured and enslaved by another group of Mayans. During this princess's capture, she learns a lot about herself and her culture. While Nando tells Barb and Kat the story, kat learns a lot about Nando, his culture, his life, and most importantly, herself. It seems that the trip she most vehemently protested may have been the most pivotal point in her short life.


I am not going to lie, at first I struggled with this book. Kat is such a cranky brat that I almost didn't want to go on. All she does is gripe and complain about this amazing trip her family took her on. She thinks all the food is poisoned, everyone is out to get her, is horribly mean to her little sister, and writes these absurd postcards to the mean girls back home begging them to remember her. I hated Kat at first. But luckily, the story of the Mayan princess started, which really caught my attention. It paralleled much of Kat's story about a privileged girl who didn't appreciated how good she had it. The moral is there, I think Salter just made Kat too unlikable at first. She was wretched! 


This is a middle reader story that appropriately handles the gruesome Mayan culture for the age group. Some of the nastier bits with the sacrifices are handled well and although still remaining true to the culture, don't overdo it. The transformation in Kat is a good one, but I can see some kids being just as annoyed with her as I was and not wanting to go on with the story. Perhaps Salter's portrayal of Kat was just a little too heavy handed and might turn the reader off before giving her a chance at redemption. I guess you will just have to see for yourself!

Great Message, Awkward Execution

With all the controversy in this country about borders, immigration, illegal aliens, and in particular Mexican immigrants, this book couldn't have come at a better time. Our students are sitting in classrooms with students who are learning English as a second language while simultaneously trying to learn the same content as their peers. Our neighbors are using labor from illegal aliens to keep their farms and businesses afloat. And our government is currently in a federal vs. state war regarding the rights of non-citizens. I would say the YA genre is well overdue for a book to examine both sides of this controversy.

The story begins with a young boy named Tyler who has grown up on the farm that has been run by his family for generations. His older brother and sister are uninterested in the back-breaking work it takes to keep the farm going, but Tyler dreams of running the farm one day, even though he is only eleven. When his grandfather dies suddenly and his father is badly injured in a farm accident, the family resorts to the last hope to keep their farm going: Mexican labor. They hire three men to help with the farm work and live on the farm, but they are surprised to find the men arrive with three young girls. Maria, Luby, and Ofie are with their father, but no one knows where their mother is. She left to return to Mexico almost a year ago to see her dying mother, but after calling Maria's father to let them know she was returning, she disappeared and they haven't heard from her since.

Tyler is having a difficult time with the new residents of the farm. He believes in his country and the constitution and hiring illegal immigrants is breaking the law. Therefore, he is very upset by the turn of events on the farm, and he is torn because he knows this is the only way to save the farm. When the girls are enrolled in his school and Maria is in his class, he gets to know them as more than just illegal immigrants, and gets to know the crueler side of his peers. While Ofie and Luby are US citizens and born in the states, Maria was born in Mexico, and the kids at school don't let her forget it. Slowly, though, the two families grow to care for one another deeply. The girls think of Tyler's grandmother as their own grandmother, Tyler's family invites Maria's family over for dinners and holidays, and all are devastated when Maria's uncle Felipe is picked up by immigration. Now the family must find a way to avoid immigration, run the farm with less men, and find out the truth of where Maria's mother is.

This is a bitter sweet story that shows both sides of a controversial situation. Chapters alternate between Tyler's story told in prose and Maria's story in the form of letters to her mother, the President of the US, and Guadalupe. It makes the reader understand that immigration is more than just a numbers and borders game- real people are the focus and their lives are in the balance. Not to mention, these people are hard workers who just want to support their families, and they have become a strong support system for businesses that couldn't continue without their help.

I found the message to be well thought out, but the writing was just plain awkward. I would have been fine if only Maria's story was choppier, but Tyler's was too. And the beginning where Tyler is concerned with the legality and moral aspects of the new farm workers, it is simply overdone. It sounded like a robot: "Illegal immigrants are illegal, the constitution is the bestest thing in the world, we follow the constitution in the bestest country in the world, therefore we don't break the law, and illegal immigrants are breaking the law, so they are all bad. Very bad." It was simply silly. It made it hard for me to take the book seriously for a while. Tyler's opinions clearly changed as the story continued, but it was almost as if Maria's family were real aliens from outer space and no one knew about them until now. This part I find hard to believe. It is set in 2005, and I find it hard to believe a family in VT would have no contact with a Mexican family until then. This part of the book was much less realistic and much more contrived.

The book is still an interesting one, and might be best as a school assignment with teacher guidance, or one read with a parent. I don't see many kids picking this story up and sticking with it long enough to get to the important messages. The writing is hard to peg because it is so awkward, but not necessarily written at a lower reading level. The topic is a great one for kids and adults at all ages. It is also an interesting choice for a student learning Spanish, because Spanish words, phrases, and sentences are scattered throughout. Basically, I would read the story first before giving it to a student, and if you are going to use it in your classroom or read with your child, be aware of the flaws in order to reap the benefits of such a story.