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About Colibri
About the Author Ann Cameron was born in Rice Lake, Wisconsin. She earned a BA with honors from Radcliffe College in Massachusetts in 1965, where she studied poetry with Robert Lowell and R. S. Fitzgerald. She earned a master's degree at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1974. Today, Cameron is the bestselling author of many popular books for children, including The Stories Julian Tells, More Stories Julian Tells, The Stories Huey Tells, and More Stories Huey Tells. Product Description When Tzunún was little, her mother nicknamed her Colibrí, Spanish for “hummingbird.” At age four, Colibrí is kidnapped from her parents in Guatemala City and ever since she’s traveled with Uncle, the ex-soldier and wandering beggar, who renamed her Rosa. Uncle told Rosa that he looked for her parents, but never found them. From the Back Cover When Tzunun was little, her mother nicknamed her Colibri, Spanish for "hummingbird." At age four, Colibri is kidnapped from her parents in Guatemala City and ever since she's traveled with Uncle, the ex-soldier and wandering beggar, who renamed her Rosa. Uncle told Rosa that he looked for her parents, but never found them. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 1The ValleyMoss and bright grasses glistened around the spring. The earth smelled as if it were singing.I scooped up water in my hands and drank.We ate our last pieces of dry bread. I shook the crumbs out of my shawl, folded it into a square, and put it on my head to shade my eyes."Let's go, Rosa," Uncle said.He always called me Rosa. My real name, Tzunœn, was a secret I had almost forgotten.The road was narrow. We walked on, Uncle carrying our belongings on his back in the black suitcase with the broken zipper. So nothing would fall out, he'd stuffed the suitcase inside a rope bag with a carrying strap. The leather strap went around his forehead and left a mark there.We were in the Ixil Valley, in the high mountains of Guatemala where it rains a lot and sometimes there's frost in the winter. Beside us was a forest of tall pines with flowers in the sunlit spaces--tiny star-shaped red ones, shaggy purple ones with rough raggedy leaves, and seven-foot-tall yellow daisies. The daisies were my favorite, the way they bent their heads and seemed to smile at me.There were rocks all around, too--enormous boulders that had tumbled down the mountains in ancient times and got to flatter land and just hit a place where they stuck.Pinecone seeds sprouted on top of boulders, driving their roots into the rock. They'd cracked some boulders wide open.The seeds in pinecones are lighter than a grain of sand. Sometimes I'd held them in my hand and blown them away, as if they were fine grains of dust. Yet they had the power deep inside them to split rock. Power silent and invisible, but real as the mountains. What was it? Where did it come from?I wanted to ask Uncle, but I didn't. He disliked questions. Sometimes for whole days he hardly talked.Uncle said he was a ladino. That is, he claimed he had some Spanish ancestors way back, as well as Mayan ones--and he said that made him moody and gave him a blood disease. He said his Spanish blood hated his Mayan blood, and his Mayan blood hated his Spanish blood, and they were together in him fighting all the time.I didn't see how that could be. Blood is blood.We walked along by pastures where sheep were grazing--white ones and black ones, grown ones and little lambs just learning to walk. I thought they were sweet, but I kept that to myself. Uncle called the people he didn't like--which was most people--"stinking sheep." I figured that meant he didn't like sheep.Behind us a pickup tore up the road, the grinding of its motor eating the stillness of the forest. We moved out of the way and it rocked along beside us, drowning the smell of grass and pines in smoke. The driver glanced at us, slowing down to see if we wanted a ride. A lot of passengers were already in the back, holding
