Skip to product information
1 of 1

Groundwood Books

Sleeping with the Light on

Sleeping with the Light on

Regular price $14.19 USD
Regular price $14.94 USD Sale price $14.19 USD
Sale Sold out
Shipping calculated at checkout.

Out of stock

Davico lives with his family above La Casita - the Little House - in Guatemala City in the early 1950s. But it's not just a little house. It's also the family restaurant

The restaurant provides plenty of distraction and adventure for Davico and his older brother, Felipe. The mean cook, Augusto, and the always-late waiter, Otto, love to play tricks on Davico. There's a huge oven in the gas cookstove, which Felipe knows how to light -- if he can only reach the box of matches above the stove. And there's the endless fascination of the glass tank of live lobsters -- including the king of them all, Genghis Khan, who stares at Davico with round unblinking black eyes, waving his antennas like submarine periscopes. Could Genghis Khan climb on the back of the other lobsters and get out of the tank, Davico wonders. Could he move faster on land than in the water?

Then one day, Davico hears shooting in the streets. There are blackouts every evening, and the family must sleep under the big wooden table in the dining room. People stop coming to the restaurant, and tanks and soldiers swarm the front of the National Palace, where a shoeshine boy warns the brothers that the gringos are coming.

But what does that mean, and who are the gringos?

Davico wants to be brave, but the shooting and tanks and airplanes flying overhead terrify him. He finds comfort in the special lamp that his father buys him to comfort him during the blackouts. But it is not enough to console him when his parents announce that it's time to leave for the United States of America, where no one speaks Spanish, and everything is different.



Author: David Unger
Publisher: Groundwood Books
Published: 10/27/2020
Pages: 96
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.45lbs
Size: 7.60h x 5.30w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9781773063843
Audience: Ages 9-12

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 11/01/2020
View full details