SuitabookCris Plata
Maia Surdam
- Reading
- Read together in short sections, pausing to trace the family’s moves and work. Let your child choose whether to focus next on the music or the changes in daily life.
- Themes
- Migrant farmwork and family life: The biography follows the family’s work and moves across several states before settling in Wisconsin. This is presented as part of a biography that also situates Mexican American migrant workers in Wisconsin’s recent past.
- Music amid hardship: Family music-making is described alongside poor working conditions, low wages and racial prejudice in Cris’s upbringing. Music is described as bringing the family together and uplifting them, but the book’s wider interpretation of these hardships is unclear.
- Worth knowing
- Pay particular attention to discrimination or prejudice.