Aida Salazar unites the protagonists of her Pura Belpré Honor recipient, Ultraviolet, and International Latino Book Award winner The Moon Within in Stream, a whipsmart, heartwarming middle-grade verse novel about two 13-year-olds sent to work "on an off-the-grid" rancho in Mexico.
Although recent eighth-grade graduates Elio and Celi have never met, both have parents who are concerned their children are being lost to screens. Both are sent for an Internet-free summer on the Atoyac rancho in Zacatecas, Mexico. Elio helps fortify the arroyo (stream) that "changed since the old government/ built a big dam a few miles upstream." Now, during summer storms, the arroyo could flood and "wipe out" Atoyac. Celi, meanwhile, assists her tías, who are curanderas, as they heal locals using herb and flower tinctures. The distraction of the tweens' phones--"it feels like my mind/ has a sugar craving"--slowly gives way to an organic kinship with the land, and an IRL attraction to each other.
Salazar immerses Elio and Celi in ways of living that mirror the experiences of their Caxcan forebears in a warm, natural setting of dirt-floored clay houses, dry canyon vistas, and burbling brown water. Elio's sense of humor carries his bouncy poetic verse while his shimmering descriptions of Celi ("a dancing rainbow of light") reflect his emotions. Celi delves into moving inner monologues, realizing she is "more than what's on a screen" and discovering the freedom of being herself, "lucky... to wax and wane/ to ebb and grow." Together, over pre-Columbian-style meals, Indigenous music, and waterfall hikes, the teens encounter the healing that can come from real-world connection. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer