Pura Belpré Medal book award winner, The Dreamer caught my eye right away with the title and art. (It's okay, you can pick a book by its cover!) Then I received an added bonus—it was a very interesting and unusual book. Neftali Reyes is a real person and I learned about his childhood in this fictionalized biography filled with drawings and poetry. You may know him as Pablo Neruda, a very famous poet from Chile. He even won the Nobel Prize for his poetry. Becoming a poet had its challenges and one of which was his father who was verbally abusive and didn't want his son to be interested in words. But growing up, the sickly Neftali spent hours dreaming and captured the essence of life in simple but exquisite language. Learn about this awesome poet either with this chapter book, or this children's picture book, shown on the right.
