The Quiet Place

 Shirley J.                 Juvenile Fiction               Creating your own space out of cardboard boxes

The Quiet Place by Sarah Stewart    44 pages

Isabel and her family move from Mexico to Michigan in the United States.   She misses her Aunt Lupita and all the fun they had.  She misses hearing Spanish being spoken, too.  She does learn to find things that make her happy in her new home, like snow and making snow angels and she loves helping her mother prepare cakes and desserts for birthday parties.  She also likes her new teacher, who doesn't speak Spanish but she has a big beautiful smile.   When her family gets a new refrigerator, she keeps the box to play with and makes a wonderful, special place all her own that is quiet and comforting.  It is big enough she brings her books inside it to sit and read.  She decorates it with her toys and she writes letters from inside it to her beloved Aunt Lupita.  Her Dad and her older brother, Chavo help her to decorate it.   It is her special silent place.   One day it rains really hard and her box gets wet and her lovely quiet place has to be thrown away (she forgot and left it outside), but it wasn't long after she was able to rebuild her beautiful quiet place.  She continued to help her mother with the cakes and sweet confections they made for birthday parties and Isabel would ask the people who's homes they went to if she could have one of the empty boxes a present had been in and was now being discarded.   She is delighted when she gets new boxes and soon her Dad and brother helped her join the new boxes together to make a huge villa.  They decorated it with Isabel and when it comes time for Isabel's birthday, she invites the children from the parties and invites them into her quiet place to show them how much fun it is to be inside and look out the windows her brother cut out of the boxes, to sing in the windows and play with toys and do puppet shows.   Her quiet place was not so quiet anymore,  but,  Isabel was happy.  Sweet book.  I recommend this to teachers, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and babysitters for kids up to 10 years old and anyone who enjoys children's literature.