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Mia's Story: A Sketchbook of Hopes & Dreams

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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

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.

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.

Mia and her parents had very little in the way of material goods. How could they, when they lived among the most vulnerable of the poor in a garbage dump. The village used to be nestled on farmland, but as city sprawl crowded out their land, the villagers had to forsake farming for picking trash. Papa made a little money selling scrap metal in the city, and Mia could at least still attend school, albeit in a small structure at the dump made of recycled materials.

They found inspiration in their community and in their dreams. Mia also found great joy in a small stray puppy that Papa brought home from the city. When her sweet dog disappeared one winter's day, Mia traveled high up into the mountains to search for him. Little did she realize that the beautiful white flowers that she found on the mountain held the key to improved well-being and economic empowerment.

This book is truly remarkable. With an unpredictable plot and stunning illustrations, each turn of the page contributes to a growing sense of awe, surprise, and hope. Thoroughly ingrained in the poignant story are vital lessons about poverty, economic development, and markets. Parents and teachers seeking rare gems among children's books will surely find Mia's Story of immense value for teaching about the power of small miracles and big dreams.