The Most Beautiful Place in the World

for ages 8 to adult

This children's novel tells the story of Juan, a young Guatemalan boy who is abandoned first by his father, then by his mother, but who finds love and happiness in spite of all his losses, and learns what it might really mean to live in "the most beautiful place in the world."

I wrote this book in the late 1980's, when I'd lived in Guatemala four years. I wrote it in only three weeks, while stories told me by children who were my neighbors were still fresh in my ears. Their emotions and their lives shaped it. Children in the United States who read it come to understand both the poverty and the pride of a foreign land. Many of them in not-so-happy families will recognize their own inner selves in Juan--and see their own courage in him, too.

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"Absorbing narrative, careful use of authentic, concrete detail intrinsic to the story as well as illustrative of the culture portrayed, and sympathetic understanding of a child's world."--Kirkus

"This most affecting book...will stay in the memory."--Buffalo, New York, News

"No social studies textbook can give a better picture of the life of a poor family in Central America...a definite purchase for grades 1-3."--Library Talk

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