Customer Reviews

Elena's Big Move

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"Elena's Big Move" is a creative book about a nine year old girl named Elena who moves from the island of Puerto Rico to the midwestern Great Lakes state of Indiana, U. S. A. Fearful of the journey, Elena is encouraged by her mother to take pictures of her favorite places and people in Puerto Rico, to carry a scrapbook of precious memories with her to her new home. When she gets to her new home, she takes her treasured album with her to school on her first day. Her new teacher encourages her to share her pictures and memories of Puerto Rico with her new classmates, and in turn they decide to collect new pictures of Indiana for Elena to help share favorite places and people of her new home with her. Although Elena finds many of the changes scary and hard to understand, she learns she can keep her memories and go forward with her life after her big move. "Elena's Big Move" ends with tips for children, parents and teachers to help in preparing for and adjusting to their own big moves in life. There is also a fun word search puzzle at the end of "Elena's Big Move" with locations discussed in both Indiana and and Puerto Rico. "Elena's Big Move" is filled with shaded paintings that illustrate the feelings Elena is having with both dark tones and light colors.

Elena is 9-years old and lives in Puerto Rico, however she is about to have a great adventure, one that is exciting and a little scary at the same time. Elena and her family are moving to Indiana.
She knows everything will be different, from the landscape and weather, and even to the different activities that she will be doing. She is also sad and afraid that she will forget her friends and her home land.
Her parents are very wise and suggest that she take pictures of everyone and everything she loves and make up a scrapbook to keep her memories in. When she arrives in Indiana and starts her new school this scrapbook full of her memories is shared with her new teacher and her fellow students opening up a world of sharing and making new memories with new friends.

In the world we live in many families are relocating, pulling up roots and moving across country or to another land. This adventure can be both exciting and scary, especially to a child. In this book author, Sarah M. Olivieri, brings the hidden fears to light. She also gives solutions to help quiet these fears. Her tale flows nicely and I believe children and adults will identify with the characters.
This is a very nice book, the illustrations are very colorful and life like, big and bold, definitely giving a clear picture to the mind, bringing the story further to life.
I think this is a great book for any child that is facing a move whether it be across country, to another land, or just to another town. It gives positive suggestions to calm fears and leaves the reader with great hope for an exciting beginning of a life in a new location. Very well done.