All the Stars Denied
In a companion novel to her critically acclaimed Shame the Stars, Pura Belpré Award Winner Guadalupe García McCall tackles the hidden history of the United States and its first mass deportation that swept up hundreds of thousands of Mexican American citizens during the Great Depression.
In the heart of the Great Depression, Rancho Las Moras, like everywhere else in Texas, is gripped by the drought of the Dust Bowl, and resentment is building among white farmers against Mexican Americans. All around town, signs go up proclaiming "No Dogs or Mexicans" and "No Mexicans Allowed."
When Estrella organizes a protest against the treatment of tejanos in their town of Monteseco, Texas, her whole family becomes a target of "repatriation" efforts to send Mexicans "back to Mexico" -- whether they were ever Mexican citizens or not. Dumped across the border and separated from half her family, Estrella must figure out a way to survive and care for her mother and baby brother. How can she reunite with her father and grandparents and convince her country of birth that she deserves to return home?
There are no easy answers in the first YA book to tackle this hidden history.
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Guadalupe García McCall is the best-selling author of Summer of the Mariposas and won the Pura Belpré Award for her first novel, Under the Mesquite. She was born in Mexico and moved to Texas as a young girl, keeping close ties with family on both sides of the border. She is a full-time author and abuelita and lives with her husband in South Texas. Find her online at ggmccall.com.
Susan L. Roth's vibrant, unique, mixed-media collage illustrations have appeared in numerous outstanding picture books, including Parrots Over Puerto Rico, winner of the Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal; Prairie Dog Song; The Mangrove Tree; Every Month Is a New Year, Malala Yousafzai: Warrior with Words, and most recently Butterfly for a King. Roth and her husband live in New York. Visit her online at susanlroth.com.
* "An intense and enlightening historical fiction title that's highly recommended for all libraries." -- School Library Journal, starred review
"Harrowing and important, All the Stars Denied explores a bleak moment when the US turned against Mexican Americans as scapegoats for its social and economic woes. Through Estrella's journey first toward activism and then back home after deportation, Guadalupe García McCall sketches with deft and poignant strokes a model of courage for our own darkling times. This loose sequel to Shame the Stars is arguably the most important YA novel of 2018." -- David Bowles, Pura Belpré Award Honor-winning author of The Smoking Mirror and They Call Me Güero
"An incredibly relevant story, now more than ever." -- Kirkus Reviews
"Through Estrella's eloquent letters to her late grandmother and insightful poetry written in her journal, the sorrow and hardship of the ordeal is brought to light in a unique voice." -- Booklist
