The Other Half of Happy

Quijana hates her name.  Everyone calls her Qui, which is a little better, but she doesn't understand why her parents would name her for Don Quijote, Spain's number one loser.  Her dad is always quoting the book, but she doesn't understand why he's so obsessed with a crazy guy who never succeeds at anything.

Everything is fine until her dad's Guatemalan relatives move to town.  Now all a sudden, her dad is really upping the Guatemalan factor in her life, and Quijana is confused and a little embarrassed.  It doesn't help that as a seventh-grader, she's old enough to take Spanish, and everyone assumes she already knows the language.  She doesn't know any Spanish!  And the other Latinx kids at school mock her for being too white.

Spending time with her Guatemalan relatives isn't as bad as she thought it would be.  She gets along pretty well with her cousins, and she learns how to make tortillas.  But when she finds out her parents want to fly to Guatemala for Christmas, she's horrified.

She's never even met her dad's mother, and she can't speak Spanish at all.  There's no way she can go to Guatemala where she can't communicate with anyone.  That's why she has a secret plan to save her money to secretly take the bus to visit her mother's mom in Florida.  Qui has always been close to her grandmother, and she feels confident this is the solution to the situation.

She also spends a lot of time taking care of her younger brother, Memito, who isn't really keeping up with other kids his age.  He hasn't started talking yet, and now he seems to be developing new issues.

Rebecca Balcarcel's middle grade novel is a perfect fit for all those kids who feel caught between two worlds.  I do think it's a bit of a stretch for a 7th grader to believe she could run away from home and her parents would just fly off to a foreign country without her.  This is a gentle story about friendship, family, and embracing your identity.