Customer Reviews

Cuba = Cuba (Vamos a) (Spanish Edition)

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This is a book that would likely receive little notice except for the controversy it has caused in Miami-Dade County, Florida, where the book has been removed from public school libraries, pending a court challenge from the ACLU. In all honesty this is the only reason I bothered to look at the book.
As is obvious from the editorial reviews this book and others in the series are designed to provide basic information about various countries at the 2nd to 4th grade level. So what do you get? Pictures of schoolchildren, pictures of places in Cuba, along with minimal text.
The books are pretty much what they claim to be - simple readers whose purpose is to teach children that there are kids all over the world, and that while they may be different in detail they are basically the same.
The knock against this particular book is that it does not discuss the flaws in present day Cuba - that the country is ruled by a brutal dictator, that there are often shortages of food and other essential items, and that political repression remains the norm in the country. All true enough - equally true that these are all irrelevant for this particular book series. Discussion of these topics is no more appropriate than discussion of the millions of children who live in poverty or under physically dangerous conditions in the United States - equally true facts that would not belong in a book in this series.
In brief, then, this book does pretty much what it is intended to do, and at a child appropriate level. It is a shame that a few extremists in the Miami community have turned this into a cause celebre.

It's about children living in Cuba, not about politics.

Childhood can be lived happily even in the worst circumstances. Just think about the children playing with friends, right now, in U.S. occupied Iraq, for that matter.

This book is for little kids, and thus at the reading level of its detractors.

Do not fault it for failing to address your adult concerns. This is juvenile literature!

Elsewhere has been noted the irony of a board of education banning a book for failing to mention the alleged banning of books in Cuba. But this is a children's book, and cannot claim to be comprehensive.

The first thought of any good author is audience. The author and editors of this series seriously considered the juvenile audience of this book, consistent with the tone and content and level of the rest of this excellent and instructive series which opens the whole world to our youngest literate students. Why pass on to our next generation the nightmares of the history from which we must all struggle together to shake off in order to awaken to a new dawn of peace and humanity. Let us focus on our unity rather than past resentments and political prejudice.

Or should I burn my copy of A Visit to Ireland for not recounting the full horrors of Cromwellian genocide through the centuries and the mid-eighteen hundreds mass exterminations as our food and beef were sent before our famished eyes to London, into the twentieth century. I would do better to seek this additional information in learned and scholarly historical works such as Hell or Connaught: The Cromwellian Colonization of Ireland, 1652-1660, The Great Hunger: Ireland: 1845-1849, or Bobby Sands: Irish Rebel : A Self-Portrait in Poetry and Polemics Issued on the 10th Anniversary of His Death, for starters.

Imagine the editors had written as well A Visit to Palestine . . .

Those who find this merely a beginner's introduction to their history do well to supplement this work with more sophisticated writings as appropriate to age and developmental levels. For instance, this door-opening work can easily find extension in such works as Reaching for the Sun : Kids in Cuba, Cuban Kids, Cuba Para Principiantes/Cuba for Beginners, etc.

Please do not blame the mango for failing as an apple. This is a beginning book for children and thus better serves our children free of the heavily laden political hostilites which leave our children no peace and opportunity to advance in peace, little hope for peace and happiness together. Otherwise, or in any case, it is an excellent place to begin a conversation with our children. May it at least enhance our reading together with our children, our turning off the television and beginning to model critical reading with our children, an exploration of the power and the limitations of the printing press, a post-modernist assessment of the value and meaning of reading, etc.

Let this book be at least a spring board. But do not ban it; do not burn it, oh school board entrusted with the education of our children. The Latin roots of the word Education mean to Lead Forth, not to enforce ignorance and retard learning. Our children upon their long path need and deserve to learn, not to be blinded, lobotomized and failing to think deeply about what they read. If not this, what do you offer them of Cuban history? Scarface (Widescreen Anniversary Edition)? Or for a comparative note: Sicko?

Cubans living in America are out of touch. Don't let them be as tyranical as Fidel. We live in a free society where people can make choices for themselves. If we were really concerned about making sure every book was 100% accurate and balanced in their representation of the adult world, there wouldn't be any books in elementary school libraries. This should be a tool to teach children about the world, not something that we should ban from children. Support the cause and buy this book!

I support this book because I see Floridians who speak in the "name of freedom" requesting the banning of books. They become the same thing they claim to hate. Hilarious!.

I am a US citizen born in Cuba, where I lived the first 13 yrs. of my life. I am also a retired school librarian with an MS in library science. Although I retired to FL, I chose the west coast of the penninsula because, frankly, Miami Cuban politics unnerve me. That being said, would I have placed "Vamos a Cuba" on the shelves of any library? ABSOLUTELY NOT.

Being retired, I first became aware of this title when it was banned by the Miami Dade school board and the controversy erupted. Like any trained librarian, I reserved judgement until I hunted down a copy of the book and read it for myself. I was amazed at its tone of deception and the breezy comparison to the life of American children. Yes, the series is intended for the lower grades, and the antics of the world's longest lasting tyrant did not have to be emphasized in detail and, no, I do not object to smiling children on its cover wearing their Pioneers school uniform; that is their reality. However, the fact is that this particular title would give young children the idea that "The people of Cuba eat, work and study like you." They do not.

I visited Cuba for the first time in 44 years at the end of 2004 with a humanitarian license (to take medicines to a convent that ministers to the sick people of Cuba) for the express purpose of witnessing for myself with adult eyes what the people of my native land were going through to survive after so many years of privation. Why are medicines needed in a country that boasts of having free medical care? Because they have no medicines available to them, nor do they have supermarkets, libraries, private industry, or personal freedom.

So do the kids of today's Cuba smile, yes of course. Do "the people of Cuba eat work and study" like Americans? No way. Their sources of information and life choices are so skewered and controlled by the government that I found it hard to understand how most of the adults I encountered on the island, who have been raised in this system, for the most part have managed to see beyond the government's line of rhetoric & propaganda.

It is unfortunate that the hapless school librarians who hopefully read the reviews for the entire 24 book series on foreign lands had no way of knowing the accuracy of any of the particular titles. For example, the review in School Library Journal reads in part: "While the information is very basic and succeeds in giving only a glimpse at life in these countries, the books may be appropriate for collections needing easy titles on different nations." However, it is even worse that the librarians did not find the time to at least peruse the "Vamos a Cuba" title before placing it on the shelves of a community that would find issue with its inaccuracies. Had they done so, this particular title at least could have been sent back to the publisher. This would have been their profesional duty based on their selection policy, not censorship, and would have saved the district the cost and negativity of a banned book controversy.

this book never mentions that in the united states dozens of school children have been killed, or wounded by their classmates. but seriously, compared to the lives of most children in the world, cuban children have it good. the teabagger mentality that supports the suppression of this book, is the most tyrannical force on the earth;
they send our children to shock and awful imperial wars.

A very informative book for children about Cuban lifestyles and customs; Fortunately void of any questionable material too vulgar or unfit for a child's eyes. If your child is interested in Cuba and doesn't care to be exposed to the obscene horrors of this world, look no further, this is the book for you!

We don't allow childrens books by the Aryan Nation in our schools, nor should we allow this one. Its pure propoganda. To be short, it teaches our children that Cuban kids are just like them, insinuating that they are free to express their thoughts, they get a quality education, and they have food on their table. This book belongs in public libraries, as is Mein Kampf, for historical purposes. This book should not be allowed in an elementary school where young impressionable children can be so easily manipulated.

This book does NOT tell the whole story.
It does NOT talk about the casinos and whorehouses and organized crime that flourished when Cuba was an American colony, BECAUSE SECOND GRADERS SHOULD BE CONVERSATIONALLY FLUENT ABOUT GAMBLING AND WHORING.
It does NOT talk about the latifundia owners who lived at their ease (they now run their mouths in Miami and on Fox television) while the peons slaved. GOSH DARN FOX TV.
It does NOT describe Kennedy's assault on the island by using local thugs who had been run off the island by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. VIVA CHE
It does NOT talk about how the Kennedy regime used Cuba as a pawn in its nuclear contest with the corresponding idiots in the USSR, targeted by American atomic weapons in Turkey, KILLING CUBA'S NASCENT INDIGENOUS MISSLE PLANTATIONS.
It does NOT talk the USA's unwillingness to protect African Americans in the South at the same time that it ran its mouth about Communism, BECAUSE BLACK PEOPLE ARE APPARENTLY ALL THE SAME, AND DISQUISITIONS ON CUBA SHOULDN'T BE LIMITED TO CUBANS.
It does NOT talk about the USA's coup in Guatemala and installation of a terrorist regime that murdered thousands of average Guatemalans, BECAUSE GUATEMALA IS APPARENTLY SOMEWHERE IN CUBA.
These omissions lead to the conclusion that this book ought to be banned. The audacity of people who write books like this, that don't tell EVERY UNRELATED STORY AT THE SAME TIME, EVERYWHERE.
Now get on it. Go to your kid's school library (if there is one) and get rid of ALL the books that don't tell the WHOLE STORY. BURN BOOKS. VIVA LA REVOLUCION.