in time, and everything was left up to
the locals here on our mountain.
She still seems surprised
that we managed just fine.
Now she has a much harder task,
trying to find Luza’s forgiveness
for our family’s sliced-in-half
past.
Listening
LUZA
Mamá says she left me
only because I was so attached to Papi,
and because she was afraid I’d fall off
her little stolen boat, and because
she was too cowardly to wait
until both my baby brother and I
were older, before seeking
her own chance to establish
an internationally
successful career
with limitless
freedom to travel.
Abuelo stayed to help me, she adds,
and Abuela was still alive back then,
so they faithfully stayed in touch,
always making plans
to be reunited
someday.
Everyone wrote letters at first, the old way,
on paper, but because the US and Cuba
were enemies with no direct mail service,
envelopes had to travel in and out
of other countries, often getting lost
along the way.
It was a challenge.
No es fácil. It’s not easy.
Mamá lost her ability to resolver.
She gave up trying to solve problems.
Now she’s right here in front of me,
telling stories along with a wildlife policeman,
both of them turning back and forth
to see if Papi and Abuelo
still have anything else
to say.
They don’t.
Neither does Edver.
I’m the only one with an infinite supply
of riddles that burst from my heart
of question marks
all over our forest floor,
ready to be pieced together
into a delicate,
fluttering,
fragile
family mosaic.
Hearing
EDVER
Research teams.
International cooperation.
That’s what the forms Dad
was supposed to fill out
were all about.
UNESCO. The United Nations.
Designation as a world Biosphere Reserve.
A wildlife survey that will bring researchers
of all sorts.
Tree roots must be growing right into my brain,
because somehow I manage to sit still and gather up
all the mud, sludge, mold, slime, grime,
and crusty, old leftover feelings
as they’re finally
revealed.
Between the Trees
LUZA
I look up.
An extravaganza
of light
and shadow!
I look down.
The treasure of soil
and moisture!
In between,
so many individual branches,
this harmony of roots
and wings, a whole world
of possibilities.
Family Magic
EDVER
If this were a video game,
I’d wipe out the whole bunch of us
and start over,
knowing exactly what
to expect.
Only I wouldn’t know, not really,
because tomorrow
just as weird.
So I listen to plans for Snoopy to stay here
and be cared for by Abuelo, while Luza
and I each go back to our own schools.
There are other plans too, for Abuelo
and my sister to stay with us at Christmas,
and then Mom will bring me back here
during spring break, and maybe again
next summer. . . .
While Mom and Dad talk to everyone else
except each other,
I try to hear any sort
of hope for this Lazarus family’s
crazy future.
Together?
Separate?
Back and forth?
I could write THE END
but it wouldn’t be true,
because our lost-and-found
two-country story
finally seems ready
to start over.
The future is huge.
There’s still plenty of time
for surprises.
Acknowledgments
I thank God for biodiversity and the people who work to protect endangered species and threatened habitats. I’m profoundly grateful to my husband, entomologist Curtis Engle, for traveling with me to some of Cuba’s spectacular UNESCO World Network of Biosphere Reserves. Special thanks to my relatives in Cuba for their hospitality.
For information about the worst Human Vacuum Cleaner, I’m indebted to entomologist Lynn LeBeck, who recommended Winged Obsession: The Pursuit of the World’s Most Notorious Butterfly Smuggler, by Jessica Speart. Special thanks to entomologist Mike Klein for confirming the presence of jewel-like beetles in Cuba.
For ongoing encouragement, I wish to thank Jennifer Crow and Kristene Scholefield of the Arne Nixon Center for the Study of Children’s Literature, and friends Sandra Ríos Balderrama, Joan Schoettler, and Angelica Carpenter. Special thanks to my wonderful agent, Michelle Humphrey; my incredible editor, Reka Simonsen; and the entire amazing Atheneum/Simon & Schuster publishing team.
Truly Cool Biodiversity Words
Biodiversity: Biological diversity; in other words, the world’s great variety of plant and animal species. Some of the most biodiverse areas on Earth are tropical rain forests.
Endemic Species: Plants or animals found only in a particular area. Due to isolation, many islands have endemic species found nowhere else on Earth.
Lazarus Species: Plants or animals that are thought to be extinct, until they’re found alive. Some Lazarus species, such as the Cuban solenodon, were classified as extinct for less than a century before being rediscovered. Others were known only from fossils until living specimens were identified. An example is el Monito del Monte, a miniature marsupial thought to have been extinct for eleven million years before one was found alive in a bamboo thicket in Chile.
World Network of Biosphere Reserves: A network of biodiverse areas designated by UNESCO, a branch of the United Nations. By 2016 there were close to seven hundred world Biosphere Reserves on Earth, including six in Cuba. Some of these protected areas cross borders, uniting countries with a common wildlife conservation goal. Others are isolated. Many include local farms and villages where people make a living by using natural resources wisely, instead of recklessly. To learn more about these communities, visit unesco.org.
Truly Uncool, Creepy People
Real-Life Human Vacuum Cleaners who kill endangered species just to sell them to collectors. In the most horrifying cases, they kill and hoard the last members of a species in order to charge higher prices as soon as they become extinct.
About the Author
MARGARITA ENGLE is a Cuban American poet and novelist whose books include The Surrender Tree, a Newbery Honor book and winner of the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award, the Pura Belpré Award, the Américas Award, and the Claudia Lewis Poetry Award; The Poet Slave of Cuba, winner of the Pura Belpré Award and the Américas Award; Tropical Secrets; The Firefly Letters; Hurricane Dancers; The Wild Book; The Lightning Dreamer, winner of the PEN Literary Award for Young Adult Literature; Silver People; Drum Dream Girl, winner of the Charlotte Zolotow Award; Lion Island; and her memoir, Enchanted Air, winner of the Pura Belpré Award and a Walter D
ean Myers Award Honor Book. She lives with her husband in central California. Visit her at margaritaengle.com.
ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
SIMON & SCHUSTER • NEW YORK
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Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Margarita-Engle
Verse Novels by
MARGARITA ENGLE
LION ISLAND:
Cuba’s Warrior of Words
ENCHANTED AIR:
Two Cultures, Two Wings: A Memoir
SILVER PEOPLE:
Voices from the Panama Canal
THE LIGHTNING DREAMER:
Cuba’s Greatest Abolitionist
THE WILD BOOK
HURRICANE DANCERS:
The First Caribbean Pirate Shipwreck
THE FIREFLY LETTERS:
A Suffragette’s Journey to Cuba
TROPICAL SECRETS:
Holocaust Refugees in Cuba
THE SURRENDER TREE:
Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom
THE POET SLAVE OF CUBA:
A Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano
ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2017 by Margarita Engle
Jacket and title page illustrations copyright © 2017 by Joe Cepeda
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Book design by Sonia Chaghatzbanian and Irene Metaxatos
Jacket design by Sonia Chaghatzbanian
Jacket illustration copyright © 2017 by Joe Cepeda
The text for this book was set in Simoncini Garamond Std.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Engle, Margarita, author.
Title: Forest world / Margarita Engle.
Description: First edition. | New York : Atheneum, [2017] | Summary: Sent to Cuba to visit the father he barely knows, Edver is surprised to meet a half-sister, Luza, whose plan to lure their cryptozoologist mother into coming there, too, turns dangerous. | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016046561
Subjects: | CYAC: Novels in verse. | Brothers and sisters—Fiction. | Family life—Cuba—Fiction. | Forests and forestry—Fiction. | Poaching—Fiction. | Cuba—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Family / Siblings. | JUVENILE FICTION / People & Places / Caribbean & Latin America. | JUVENILE FICTION / Nature & the Natural World / Environment.
Classification: LCC PZ7.5.E54 For 2017 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016046561
ISBN 978-1-4814-9057-3
ISBN 978-1-4814-9059-7 (eBook)