Customer Reviews

Grab Hands and Run

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book is great! I think you can learn a lot from a book like
this because some people think coming here is easy but you find
out it's not.Grab Hands and Run is good because it gives lots of
details so it's easy to picture the story in your mind. I think the author
did a good job by writting this story because it teaches about the lessons in life and how families have to stick together no matter how hard or difficult the problem is.

Overall, I was not satisfied with Grab Hands and Run. When I picked it up, I was interested to be reading about the lives of immigrants from El Salvador, as I had never found much on that subject or any other South American country for that matter. However, I was disappointed. The writing, I thought, was too flat.Although I felt for the characters (and would find it hard for any priveledged American or person not to), there was no third dimention to them. They were always the "good guys," and there's nothing wrong with that except that no three people can constantly be good without having another side to them. I do not mean that Paloma had to have a dark, hateful spirit deep within her that wanted to drop her children's hands and save herself. I simply mean that the human character is more complex than Frances Temple portrays it. At the end, I did not feel any rapture or uplifting of spirit; rather, I felt that, despite the many trials the family went through, it was no great accomplishment. I would have liked to see another side to the characters developed, and a deeper probing of the immigrant and human's soul. Where does their determination come from? Do they ever feel regret that they left El Salvador. Don't they miss anything? With this subject matter, there has to be more explored

This book entails and discuss hope and how a family sticks together during the hardest times in life. This book also has suspense, espically at the end when the author leaves you in imaging what happend after the book has ended.

Temples' fine book is both an easy read for a young adult reader and a compelling story line, full of close escapes, sibling horseplay, and the coming of age of young Felipe as he experiences the perils of escaping northward from the military Junta in El Salvador circa 1980. The book is broken into reasonably-short chapters, titled for each event in the unfolding drama, with plenty of close calls and a lot of heartbreak (the ending is bittersweet - spoiler alert - ). Many of the details are seen through a preadolescent boy's eyes and feel very authentic.

This is an excellent book to complement other young adult novels about families escaping across the border to the U.S., such as the excellent La Linea. In this one, the resourceful but terrified victims are Central American, treated badly in Mexico as well as the US, and bound for Canada. It resembles the gripping movie Sin Nombre, but since there is no explicit sex or violence (although there are some dead bodies)a younger and more sensitive reader will enjoy it a lot.

There are a number of Spanish words and Mexican references, which might help a young Latino reader get his/her bearings, but not so many that a reader without such a background would feel confused. This should be put back in print and made available in school libraries or classroom libraries everywhere. It's a winner.

Felipe, a twelve-year-old living in El Salvador, knows that his country is somewhat dangerous. He knows that boys his age are taken from their homes and forced to join the army. He knows the military doesn't tolerate those who are against them, and he knows it is very dangerous to say bad things about the government or the way the country is run.

Felipe also knows that his father is not just an architect, that he also is involved in some things that his government wouldn't like. Felipe is worried one night when he overhears his father tell his mother that if he ever disappears, she should take Felipe and his little sister Romy and escape to Canada where he might be able to find them if he is still alive.

It doesn't seem like anything that could ever really happen, but then one day Felipe's father is gone. Felipe and Romy and their mother immediately start the journey north, before anyone can come after them.

It was interesting to read a story of illegal immigration from the point of view of a family in such a desperate situation. However, many of the border crossings in this book were too easy. I didn't think that they were very realistic.

Andre Zayas
April 13, 2005
Afternoon reading lab



Grab hands and Run, By: Frances Temple.

It is about a boy named Felipe who the military is looking for so they could draft him. The first time they go after him his grandparents hide him so Felipe was safe. His mother comes to pick his little sister and him up and they started to flee to Canada. The first time the military tried to draft Felipe his grandparents hid him so he dodged a bullet there. After that His mother picked him and his sister up and started to flee to Canada.
I like this book because it was really interesting the author used Spanish words and had an intense story line. Andre Zayas

This book is boring, and I have to trace where they go on a map! It's very hard to do this since it says,"We must cross the bridge". I don't really like it, and I don't know why some people say it's good cause I almost feel asleep reading it. It's just not that good.

It would be difficult to have a hard heart toward refugees after reading "Grab Hands and Run". This book is so well written. Every step along their journey has potential problems and dangers in it, yet somehow they make it from El Salvador to Canada. This book deepened my gratitude for the safety of my own home and the strength of our American democracy. This would be a timely book for children to read, knowing that many people will flee Honduras and Guatamala in the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch.

Jeez! I hated this book! I could not stay focussed or even remember what happened because it was soooo boring! It's the worst book I ever read! I had to read it for school, that's the only reason I did read it. Now, I have a test on the book, and I'm probably going to do bad, because I don't know what happened! It was just way to boring for me and I hated it so much that i couldn't remember anything that happened. NOW IM GONNA FAIL CUZ THIS STUPID BOOK!