Honoring Migrants in a Dangerous Time

Artist Alvaro Enciso has made it his goal to remember and honor the lives of the thousands of migrants who have died in the Sonoran Desert, trying to cross into the United States, trying to get to a new life. Every week, Enciso goes out with a group of volunteers from the Tucson Samaritans to place crosses at the exact location where the remains were found.This is the narrative behind a brief Arizona Public Media documentary, Where Dreams Die. The question is, if we're to be honest, if it were any of us, if our lives and our children's lives were at risk, would we care about borders or would we cross them recklessly, wherever we could? And there are other factors at play. With the immediate reality of climate change, there will only be more refugees. They will not care about borders and how can we, in conscience, blame them?I wish we lived in a time when we didn't need to write and publish books for children about these horrors visited upon children. But since we live in this dreadful reality, I'm grateful for books like Diane de Anda's beautiful Mango Moon.There's a full moon out tonight and Maricela misses her father. He's been taken away from the family, and he's facing deportation. The hole in the family and the community is made palpable through simple, text and through Cornelison's tender illustrations. The book ends on a note of hope that comes, not from reality (real life, alas, is all about detention and razor-wire). Rather it comes  from a child's imaginings and from the moon, symbolically helping Maricela to hold her Papi  in her heart.For more children's books on families crossing at the US-Mexico border, check out this list at Erin Boyle's Reading My Tea Leaves blog.