Migrant

I liked this book for three reasons. First, the writing style the author uses flows very well throughout the book. It keeps a steady, yet moving pace as well. It seems each page in the book obtains a particular rhythm, and I notice this pattern continues as I turned to the pages after it. Second, I

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thought the point of view the author tells this story from is great. It tells it from the little girl's point of view, as she travels to and from with her family. I think it can be a great motivational feature for kids in a classroom to hear it from a perspective of someone relatively close to them in age. Lastly, I liked this book because the illustrations were vibrant, and eye-catching. The pictures almost seemed in a way, particularly crisp and clear, and I think that is a positive aspect of this book. All in all, I would recommend this book for the reasons stated above, and would love to read more from this author!!

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I had no idea that there was a community of Mennonites who migrated up to Canada from Mexico and back every year. I was intrigued by that. Not my favorite style of illustration.

I love how the illustrator used the whole page for the artwork and her multiple use of medium. The story is really imaginative and I liked the connections and comparison she made with herself and her family to animals.

This book is about a girl named Anne who comes from a migrant family. She is constantly moving and doesn't have a place to call home.

This is good for 2-8 graders. It is a good look into how a migrant student might feel, and hopefully you could use it to welcome new students that could possibly a

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migrant student.

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Migrnat is a great book about a young girl who compares herself to a jack-Rabbit who lives in a dark who and always changes where it is living. while growing up she was always moving around and wondered what it would be like to live in one place. As she asked her mother why they moved so much her

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mother wasn't sure what to say beside that they were migrating. Their family was migrating just as the geese fly south for the winter and the bears hunker down in the winter. Everybody migrats at some point in their lives their family just does a little bit more.
This book is a great book for any children who are moving a lot and or are interested about migrating and animals that may migrant. I would recommend this book to children under the ages of ten. This book takes some thought and allows the older children to understand the concept more.

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I thought this book was great. There is so many great visions that reading creates for children as well as the illustrations. I would use this book in the classroom because there are so many activities that could be connected to this story.

This book is about a young girl named Anna, whose family works on a farm. Anna is confused about her identity and questions her surroundings, while also wondering what it would be like to be different animals. For instance, during the daytime, she identifies herself not as a "worker bee," but as a

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normal bee, and during the nighttime, she is a kitten-"a safe thing, curled there with [her] sisters by [her] side." I like how this book is from the point of view of a young migrant worker. This book illustrates to children what it may feel like to be from a family working on the farm and performing labor. The illustrations were very detailed and kept me engaged. I like how the drawings were not ordinary and included polkda dot leaves and striped trees. I would have liked this book more if it included more textual information to better create an image for the children.

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Wonderful story about a young girl in a migrant worker family imagining a more settled life. Never knew about the Mennonites in Mexico.

Anna and her family spend their lives migrating from place to place to work. This book was an interesting book to read. We normally get the view point of migrating to places from an adult view and I thought it was pretty cool to see it from the point of view of a child and what goes through her

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mind. Her thoughts are very interesting.

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The picture book, “Migrant”, is about a little girl whose family includes seasonal laborers who travel north to harvest fruits and vegetables. The first aspect of why I enjoyed this book was the line work and specific color choice within the illustrations. It was no surprise to me that this

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book won the Best-Illustrated Children’s Book Award according to New York Times. The illustrator, Isabelle Arsenault, used many colors and blended them together using colored pencils. Arsenault did a fantastic job using lines and colors to portray the different scenes. The second aspect as to why I enjoyed this book was the entire plot and how she related her feelings to different living creatures. For example, Anna states that there are often times when she feels like a bird herself. “It is the birds, after all, that fly north in the spring and south every fall, chasing the sun, following the warmth”, referring to her family members who travel north for seasonal work. The main idea of this book is to display a different perspective of a migrant individual and her feelings about always having to travel but never really having a stationary home.

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This story is about a girl and her family who constantly are moving. Anna describes her family as different animals, depending on the season. Anna wonders what it would be like to have a permanent home. The author goes above and beyond to write about what it's like to be part of a family that is

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constantly on the move due to work. The illustrator also depicts beautiful artwork that is very appropriate for the book.

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Anna is the child of Mennonites from Mexico, who have come north to harvest fruit and vegetables. Sometimes she feels like a bird, flying north in the spring and south in the fall, sometimes like a jackrabbit in an abandoned burrow, since her family occupies an empty farmhouse near the fields,

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sometimes like a kitten, as she shares a bed with her sisters . . . But above all Anna wonders what it would be like to be a tree rooted deeply in the earth, watching the seasons come and go, instead of being like a "feather in the wind."

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Response - It was interesting to learn that Mexicans are not the only migrant workers who leave Mexico for the north. In addition, German-speaking Mennonites migrate between Mexico and Canada, too.

Curricular connection - Unit on migration; also as a read aloud to teach figurative language

Summary: Migrant is about a girl named Anna, whose family travels with the seasons to work on whatever farms need workers at that time. Through the book, she compares herself to different animals, and wonders what it would be like to grow roots, and be able to just stay in one place, and watch all

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of the seasons pass by from a home that she didn’t have to leave. She talked some about how different she felt when they shopped, and how she couldn’t understand the other people. And when the season ended, they left again.

Personal Reaction: I thought that Migrant was beautifully written. I really enjoyed this book, and how Anna kept comparing herself to bees, and rabbits, and trees. It made me sad sort of, that she never got to place roots, but I still enjoyed reading the book.

Classroom Extensions:
1. Have children pick an animal they would compare themselves to.
2. Children could describe what the seasons all look like to them from their homes.
3. Kids could talk about traveling, and could teach them some about people who travel for their work, like Anna. Ask them where they might like to travel to with their families.

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Migrant is about Anna, who is the youngest in a family of migrant workers. They constantly move with the change of the seasons and live in abandoned farm houses. Anna imagines that she and her family are different animals. Yet, she imagines that she lived somewhere permanently than moving around.

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Overall, I love the detail of the vibrant illustrations and I would use this book to help children relate to constantly moving.

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Anna and her Mennonite family migrate every year from their farms in Mexico to work in Canada's fields. Still citizens of Canada, which they left in the 1920s, they come for the work that will help them survive in their adopted home, where life is hard. Anna wonders about many things, chief amongst

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them what it would feel like to be settled. She sometimes feels shy and out of place amongst Canada's English-speaking people - her community speak Low German, or Plautdietsch - but she also enjoys hearing unfamiliar words and tones. Eventually, at the end of the season, her family migrates again...

Migrant pairs an emotionally rich but understated narrative from author Maxine Trottier with lovely artwork from illustrator Isabelle Arsenault, poignantly depicting the emotional life of a child of migrant workers. I was unaware of this community of Mennonites, before picking up the book, and although I didn't learn much more about them specifically - something I have seen criticized - I felt that the story was successful in exploring, not just the emotional costs of this kind of work, but also the feeling of being set apart, when one belongs to a small religious minority. The artwork is beautiful, ably capturing Anna's flights of fancy, whether she is imagining herself and her sisters as kittens, or her family as migrating birds. Recommended to anyone looking for picture-books that offer a gentle introduction to the idea of migrant work and workers.

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In Maxine Trottier’s Migrant, we learn what’s like to be a migrant worker through the eyes of a young girl named Anna. Trottier relates migrant families to a flock of birds, comforts them with a kitten’s warmth, and compares their temporary housing to a jack rabbit’s burrow. The

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illustrations by Isabelle Arsenault bring Anna’s imagination to life – her transformation to a jack rabbit to comparing the voices of her fellow migrants to crickets before she is whisked away by one upon its back. As a child whose mother traveled across the state and country for work while she was growing up, this book echoes her memories. It’s beautifully written and wonderfully illustrated that all readers will fall in love with it immediately.

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