Under the Same Sky - by Cynthia C DeFelice (Paperback)

About the Book

While trying to earn money for a motor bike, fourteen-year-old Joe Pederson becomes involved with the Mexicans who work on his family's farm and develops a better relationship with his father.

Book Synopsis

A teenager discovers racism and romance on his father's farm in author Cynthia DeFelice's Under the Same Sky.

For his fourteenth birthday, Joe Pedersen wants a motorbike that costs nearly a thousand dollars. But his mom says the usual birthday gift is fifty dollars, and his dad wants Joe to earn the rest of the money himself and "find out what a real day's work feels like." Angry that his father doesn't think he's up to the job, Joe joins the Mexican laborers who come to his father's farm each summer. Manuel, the crew boss, is only sixteen, yet highly regarded by the other workers and the Pedersen family. Joe's resentment grows when his father treats Manuel as an equal. Compared with Manuel, Joe knows nothing about planting and hoeing cabbage and picking strawberries. But he toughs out the long, grueling days in the hot sun, determined not only to make money but to gain the respect of his stern, hardworking father. Joe soon learns about the problems and fears the Mexicans live with every day, and, before long, thanks to Manuel, his beautiful cousin Luisa, and the rest of the crew, Joe comes to see the world in a whole different way.

In her sensitive novel, Cynthia DeFelice explores our dependency on migrant workers and simultaneous reluctance to let these people into our country and into our lives.

Under the Same Sky is a Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

Review Quotes

"Will make readers think twice about their own prejudices." --VOYA

"With sensitivity and self-deprecating humor and reflection, Joe narrates a well-paced story that illuminates the need for understanding, tolerance, and discussion of the role and rights of migrant workers in the United States." --School Library Journal

"Offers much to absorb and stimulate readers . . . [DeFelice] engineers a dramatic climax that allows Joe to demonstrate real courage - and that will let readers grapple with the notion that right and wrong are not always easily identifiable." --Publishers Weekly

"Suspense and romance keep the story going, at the same time that DeFelice conveys the vital work of migrant workers in U.S. agriculture and draws attention to problems with immigration policies." --Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Cynthia DeFelice was the author of many bestselling titles for young readers, including the novels Wild Life, The Ghost of Cutler Creek, Signal, and The Missing Manatee, as well as the picture books, One Potato, Two Potato, and Casey in the Bath. Her books were nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award and listed as American Library Association Notable Children's Books and Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year, among numerous other honors. Cynthia was born in Philadelphia in 1951. As a child, she was always reading. Summer vacations began with a trip to the bookstore, where she and her sister and brothers were allowed to pick out books for their summer reading. "To me," she said, "those trips to the bookstore were even better than the rare occasions when we were given a quarter and turned loose at the penny-candy store on the boardwalk." Cynthia worked as a bookseller, a barn painter, a storyteller, and a school librarian. She and her husband lived in Geneva, New York. She died at age seventy-two in 2024.