Mia's Story: A Sketchbook of Hopes & Dreams [Hardcover]

Michael Foreman (Author, Illustrator)

Book Description

Age Level: 5 and up | Grade Level: K and up

From award-winning picture book artist Michael Foreman comes the uplifting tale of a girl whose search for a lost puppy leads to some wondrous wildflowers — and a magical way to transform her barren village.

In a bleak little village in Chile, Papa comes home from his day of selling metal scraps with a wonderful surprise for his daughter, Mia. It's a puppy she names Poco, who follows the little girl everywhere — until one day, as puppies will do, Poco wanders away. As Mia searches for her pup, she finds herself all alone at the top of the highest mountain, where she gathers a clump of snow-white flowers to plant by her home. Soon Mia's fragrant flowers have spread through the village and blanketed the once-ugly dump. Before long, she is selling her flowers in the city square, telling crowds of customers that "they come from the stars." But wherever the flowers are, Mia is always reminded of Poco. Is it possible the flowers may bring back her beloved dog after all?

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 1-4–Inspired by the people the author met during a visit to Chile, this story tells of Mia and her family, who make their home from the materials they scavenge from the village dump and their living by selling the scraps they collect there. When Mia goes on a long search for her dog, she finds herself high in the mountains where the air is clear, free of the dark cloud that always fill[s] the valley where she lives. There she discovers lovely white flowers and transplants them at home. When they grow and spread, she starts a flower business with her father in the city. The large-print text is illustrated with watercolor spreads, and the handwritten sketchbook entries are accompanied by drawings and watercolor vignettes. Mia and the other market vendors wear hats and ponchos typical of the region while her father wears jeans and a baseball cap. The predominance of browns and grays emphasizes the pollution and bleak environment in which the people live. However, though they have very few material goods, they go about their lives with verve, attend school, play soccer, and, above all, cherish the dream of one day having a home made of brick. This story, along with Dyanne DiSalvo's A Castle on Viola Street (HarperCollins, 2001), offers readers glimpses into the resilience of the human spirit.–Marianne Saccardi, formerly at Norwalk Community College, CT
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Gr. 1-3. Foreman's story of a Chilean whose village lies between the city and the mountains begins with his words, "I will never forget the day I met Mia." Like many other villagers, Mia's father harvests scrap metal from the nearby dump and sells it in the city. When Mia's dog Poco disappears one winter day, she rides a horse into the mountains to look for him, gathers some flowering plants she has never seen before, and brings them back to her village, where they change the landscape and her fortunes for the better. A combination of captioned sketches and double-page pictures done in pencils and watercolors provide captivating views of Mia's village and the surrounding countryside as well as Mia, her family, and the animals and plants she cares for. Besides an appealing cover art depicting Mia on horseback, this unusual book offers an engaging story, graceful illustrations, and a rare glimpse of a child's life in contemporary Chile. Carolyn Phelan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 5 and up
  
• Hardcover: 32 pages
• Publisher: Candlewick (July 11, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0763630632
• ISBN-13: 978-0763630638
• Product Dimensions: 10.6 x 0.4 x 8.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,039,188 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A LITTLE GIRL IN SEARCH OF HER DREAM, July 12, 2006

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mia's Story: A Sketchbook of Hopes & Dreams (Hardcover)

Relating his story in the first person narrative author/illustrator Michael Foreman tells of the day the bus on which he was traveling broke down. It seemed to him he was in a vast wasteland, which is where he met Mia: this was her village called Campamento San Francisco.

Village may be too attractive a description of this place because there were no gardens or trees, not even a road - only a mud track. Mia's house, as well as the others, are made from trash, whatever can be salvaged. Her Papa goes into the city every day to sell trash, and dreams of some day building a house of bricks.

One day her Papa came home with a surprise - a beautiful puppy he had found wandering alone in the city. She called him Poco because he was so small. Girl and puppy were soon inseparable until the day Poco disappeared. After she had looked all over her village she got on a horse and rode out to the dump, then beyond the dump, then high up in the mountains. It was there that she found beautiful wildflowers.

The hope and ingenuity of the people that Foreman met in that village are reflected in what she did with the flowers. As for Poco? Another surprise.

Foreman's full page pastel watercolor and pencil illustrations are lovely as they accompany this tale of a little girl in search of her dream.

- Gail Cooke

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Top of the heap, July 18, 2006

By 

Anne B. Levy "bookbuds.net" (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mia's Story: A Sketchbook of Hopes & Dreams (Hardcover)

Let's say you were to open an artist's sketchbook to see what he's scribbled there. You'd expect to see a few pen-and-ink doodles, some messy notes, perhaps a few fuller pictures that have been fleshed out and colored in.

You might feel a thrill peering in on a work in progress, hoping to glimpse the whirring gears of a creative mind. That's what I felt reading this journal of Foreman's encounter with a young girl who lives in a garbage dump outside Santiago, Chile.

Upbeat, redemptive stories about girls living in garbage dumps surely don't come along every day, but Foreman shows us what captivated him about the family. As he writes on the back flap:

"For Manuel and his fellow villagers, the trash was a crop to be harvested, recycled, and made useful once more."

Mia is Manuel's only daughter, whom Foreman encounters when his bus to the Andes mountains breaks down in her village. A few cross-hatchings here, a wash of blue or beige there is enough to conjure up the splay of rickety hovels that pass for a village or Manuel's rusting truck. The story is scrawled on the scraps of paper:

"Sometimes Papa comes home happy with money in his pockets, and sometimes he comes home sad with none."

Foreman is the master of small gestures, as Manuel hugs his daughter or pulls a puppy out of his jacket for her, his thin face a gaunt landscape of hardship despite his grin. The puppy soon runs off, and Mia's pursuit into the mountains leads her to a white flower that she brings home and cultivates, until after a couple years it covers the dingy village in snowy blooms and offers a chance at another source of income.

The flower is probably some sort of lily, an appropriate metaphor for redemption and purity. Because the chance encounter isn't just between the artist and an innocent, ever-hopeful Mia, but between her world and ours, where our assumptions about what it takes to be happy seem startlingly provincial.

Each scrap of paper in the artist's notebook becomes a passport into another culture, where wealth is measured by how well you enjoy what you have.

5.0 out of 5 stars Michael Foreman tells a wonderful story, August 2, 2011

By 

kimcat (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mia's Story: A Sketchbook of Hopes & Dreams (Hardcover)

A story is always wonderful when you know the author had some experience behind it. Michael Foreman does a wonderful job of presenting the characters and the location. Beautiful images and a great story told. A must read for any elementary level child that will teach and inspire them to always look for hope in everything.