America, My New Home - Hardcover

From her Caribbean island birthplace, a young girl carries a dream and journeys to a new land that is atonce puzzling, frightening, and inspiring. In twenty-three compelling poems, Jamaican-born poet Monica Gunning tells her immigrant's story with gentle humor, grace, and a child's sense of wonder. She desribes a place where skyscrapers, rather than the moon, light the night; where people dress in woolens, ready for snow; where no one knows your name. Yet this same place offers exciting treasures: dizzying amusement park rides, stirring symphony concerts, flashy circus performers, towering cathedrals, and captivating art museums that speak to those who linger. Above all, this new land is place where "hope glows, a beacon / guiding ocean-deep dreamers / from storm surfs to shore.""

Monica Gunning is the author of "Not a Copper Penny in Me House, "an NCTE Notable Book in the Language Arts selection, and "Under the Breadfruit Tree. "She lives in California. Ken Condon provided artwork for "Sky Scrape/City Scape: Poems of City Life, "selected by JaneYolen, and "When a City Leans Against the Sky, "poems by Allan A. De Fina. He lives in Ashland, Massachusetts."