I almost didn’t read this book because I didn’t understand what the front picture was. I thought it was a drawing or something. Then I realized it was a real photo of a real person on a real train traveling through Mexico to the U.S. from Central America.

This book is so wild and good. I’ve read a few novels about parents having left their kids behind to come to the U.S. to work, but I’ve never read a book like this–one that’s about the perspective of children who so desperately miss their mothers. I read this book on and around Mother’s Day, and it forced me to think more seriously about family separation as a tool of colonialism/capitalism.