How Many Days to America?
By Eve Bunting and illustrated by Beth Peck
This is a story about a family that is escaping a war in their home country and their goal is to get to America. The journey they take is long and hard and there were some points in the book where the people traveling to America ran into some problems. They made it to America ready to start a new life. I liked how this book addresses what it is like for immigrants to enter our country today. I think that there are many books out there about immigration but those books take place in the mid 1700’s to 1920. This book gives younger children an idea of what immigration looks like today. This might be especially important if there are students that are entering the class from different countries, it might give the American students a better idea of what their peers might have experienced when coming to America.
As for the illustrations in this book I liked how they were drawn and that there were lots of colors used. One thing I did not like is that there was no expression on the people’s faces. The illustrator didn’t add any detail to the faces of the characters. I think that it is a shame. I would think that there would be lots of expression coming from their faces as they left the country they were born in to go to a new scary, unfamiliar country. I wish there was more of the emotion portrayed in the illustrations