Clap When You Land: Family, Loss, Travel

Welcome back to my blog where I will be reviewing books selected from the American Library Association’s weekly planner for July 2023-December 2024. This book is for the Week of November 5-11. Here is the eighth and final book being reviewed: Clap When You Land written by Elizabeth Acevedo. 

 

**SPOILERS AHEAD***  

This is a new young adult book written in verse released in 2020. It tells the story of two girls from the Dominican Republic, who unknowingly share the same father, learn that he has passed away in a plane crash. This tragedy brings together two young woman and demonstrates the camaraderie of family, even if it is family you never met before.

The one sister Camino, lives in the Dominican Republic and has mainly been raised by her aunt as her father would spend nine months of the year working in New York City. Yahaira, the other sister, lives in New York City and did not know that she had a sister, or even that her father had another family in the DR.

Camino struggles after her father’s death as there is now no male adult figure to protect her. She has to deal with the local gangs and the men in them by herself. Her safety is threatened and she has to grow into a woman with confidence and power quickly.

Yahaira struggles because she always wondered why her dad would return to the DR for three months each year. Now that she knows the real reason, that she had a half-sister there, she has to deal with the shock of this revelation while mourning his death. That is a lot of emotions for a teenager to handle, especially one who is still expected to do well in school.

The two sisters learn that their dad wasn’t the idol they always believed he was. he had his imperfections, such as having two different families on two different continents. They are able to meet each other and grieve together, even though they both knew their dad in different ways. There is a feeling of anger and frustration and they wish he would have told them about having a sister, and having another family before finding this out through his passing. The two teenagers find solace in each other and gain a new definition of what family means to them.

The theme of the novel is the strength of family. These two half-sisters only met following their father’s death.They learn more and more about each other and even about their father as they learn how he interacted and treated them. They also get to learn more abut each other’s cultures. Both are Dominican, but one grew up on the island and the other grew up in NYC. Living as a Dominican in New York, is a different experience than as a native on the island.

This book is not what I typically choose, but I really enjoyed it. I do not usually like books written in verse, and would have liked this book better if it was not in verse, but the storyline was very strong and compelling. Clap When You Land earns 4 out of 5 stars in my opinion. I was quickly hooked into the plot and I enjoyed how the verse helped create a visual representation of the novel and experiences faced and shared by sisters. As the oldest sibling in my family, I found it interesting and wondered how I would have reacted as a junior in high school and just learned of a half-sister after being an only child my whole life. This is my last blog post of the semester, and I hope you enjoyed at least one of these eight books that I’ve recommended throughout the course of the semester.