Margarita Engle - With a Star in My Hand: Rubén Darío, Poetry Hero

ALSO BY MARGARITA ENGLE Enchanted Air:Two Cultures, Two Wings: A MemoirSoaring Earth:A Companion Memoir to Enchanted AirJazz Owls:A Novel of the Zoot Suit RiotsForest WorldLion Island:Cubas Warrior of WordsSilver People:Voices from the Panama CanalThe Lightning Dreamer:Cubas Greatest AbolitionistThe Wild BookHurricane Dancers:The First Caribbean Pirate ShipwreckThe Firefly Letters:A Suffragettes Journey to CubaTropical Secrets:Holocaust Refugees in CubaThe Surrender Tree:Poems of Cubas Struggle for FreedomThe Poet Slave of Cuba:A Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano An imprint of Simon & Schuster Childrens Publishing Division 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020 www.SimonandSchuster.com This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the authors imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Text copyright 2020 by Margarita Engle Jacket illustration copyright 2020 by Willian Santiago All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Atheneum logo is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc. For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or .

The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com. Book design by Debra Sfetsios-Conover Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Engle, Margarita, author. Title: With a star in my hand : Rubn Daro, poetry hero / Margarita Engle. Description: First edition. | New York : Atheneum Books for Young Readers, [2020] | Summary: A novel in verse about the life and work of Rubn Daro, a Nicaraguan poet who started life as an abandoned child and grew to become the father of a new literary movement.

Includes historical notes. | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2019003842 | ISBN 9781534424937 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781534424951 (eBook) Subjects: LCSH: Daro, Rubn, 18671916Childhood and youthJuvenile fiction. | NicaraguaHistory18381909Fiction. | CYAC: Novels in verse. | PoetsFiction. | NicaraguaHistory19371979Fiction. | NicaraguaHistory19371979Fiction.

Classification: LCC PZ7.5.E54 Rub 2020 | DDC [Fic]dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019003842 For Alma Flor Ada and Isabel Campoy, heroes of bilingual literature; and for all the heroic poets of the future Momotombo se alzaba lrico y soberano,yo tena quince aos: una estrella en la mano! Momotombo rose up lyrical and free, I was fifteen years old: a star in my hand! Rubn Daro

My first memory was one I could not understand until years later: playing with towering animals under a palm tree, all around me gentle eyes, feathery green fronds, and sticky tidbits of fruit stuck to cow lips. The cattle were smelly and friendly, just as hungry for palm fruit as I was for milk. Where did Mam go? I was too young for a sense of time, but somehow I expected to be exiled forever in that musical tangle of thumping hoofs and clackety horns, my own wailing voice adding a flutelike magic to the noise. When I remember abandonment, all I feel is a sense of my smallness. The roaming bulls ignored me. I must have been too tiny to seem truly human.

Muddy legs, grubby face. If Id stayed in that cow world long enough, I might have grown hoofs, horns, two more legs, and a swishing tail.

Jaguars, pumas, and other big cats, poisonous snakes and vampire bats... when Mam abandoned me in a jungle, did she think about all the fearful creatures or was she merely offering me a green gift, the sneaky hunt for shy sly strangely prowling rhymes to help me pass safely through a dangerous wilderness called time? With the rhythmic music of the herd rattling through my busy mind, I tried to moo like a cow, coo like a dove, then holler and bellow, just a lost and lonely little boy whose human voice rose up in an effort to transform beastly emotions. No, I was not an animal, but yes, I felt grateful to four-legged creatures for the lullabies they sang to green trees and blue sky. My mothers friend found me. My mothers friend found me.

He was an angry farmer who spanked my bottom. Thwack! Smack! The crackling shuffle of rustling hoofs sounded like a dance, as my cow friends saw their chance to escape, leaving me alone with the shouting stranger who tossed me across a mules broad back, where I bumped and swayed all the way to a palm-thatched hut... but Mam was not there in the little house. She had gone away.

Black eyes. Dark hair. Dark hair.

Waterfall laughter. Trying to picture my lost mother has become a race of entrancing words that gallop faster and faster. Did Mam fly into the sky like a winged being, or is she alive and hiding?

A bearded man on a spirited horse rescued me from the gloomy farmer. We thundered far across the green hills of Honduras, hoofbeats making me feel like a centaur, as we galloped over the border to Nicaraguamy homelandbut not to the small room in the back of a store in the little town of Metapa where I was born. Instead, we ended up in a rambling old horseshoe-shaped house in the city of Len, where I was finally told that Mam wanted me to live HERE with strangers. I soon learned that the bearded rescuer was my great-uncle, called El Bocn by all who knew him.

Big Mouth, such a suitable nickname for a man who tells tall tales in a booming, larger-than-life story voice. He speaks of steep mountains with icy peaks, and of gallant knights who battle ogres and dragons, and of smoothly rolling hills in distant lands, countries so remote and amazing that I can hardly absorb the fascinating range of exotic names. Has he really traveled so much? France? California? Soon, when I grow up, I plan to roam the earth and be a Big Mouth too, speaking truthfully whenever I choose, never caring if anyone is offended. Any harsh fact is so much better than telling lies like a tricky mother who pretends shell just be gone for a little while.

El Bocn and his wife, my great-aunt Bernarda, decide to make me their son. Hes huge and loud, shes small and flowery, with curly hair, a delicate voice, and an eager way of making children join all her songs, parties, and prayers.

Living in their vast, echoing home, I soon learn the essential skill of storytelling along with horsemanship, hunting, fishing, and wild fruit harvesting. The only art I never master is convincing others that I dont really care how and why Mam vanished.

The city is musical with church bells and chirping birds, heels tapping on cobblestones, and lush green gardens that grow so fast that every morning brings new blossoms, each with its own enchanted fragrance. El Bocn is not the only one who fills the humid air with ribbons of words that seem to draw pictures.... Serapia is the cook who tells tales she learned from her