Drum Dream Girl Book Review

Drum Dream Girl

Written by Margarita Engle

Illustrated by Rafael Lopez

Bibliography

Engle, M. (2015). Drum dream girl: How one girl's courage changed music (R. Lopez, Illus.). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing.

ISBN 9780544102286

Summary

Drum Dream Girl is a vibrant narrative biography about Milo Castro Zaldarriaga told in thrumming poetry. According to Engle's Historical Note, Milo, a Chinese-African-Cuban girl, became the first girl to play drums in Cuba, breaking the boys-only drummer tradition. Engle tells Milo's story of dreaming and practicing and learning the drums on her own, before her sisters helped launch her private dreams into the public sphere. Illustrator Rafael Lopez displays Milo's rich inner life in vivid pictures, while also showcasing Cuba's beautiful island and people.

Analysis

Engle's use of imagery is masterful in this biography. Her best use of figurative language is her frequent onomatopoeia. Here words are booming and tumbling throughout the book, "pounding," "tapping," "boom boom booming" (10). Even the word "sticks" on this page has an onomatopoetic quality when paired in the phrase, "with long, loud sticks" (10). The word "timbales" resonates with the very sound it makes when Milo strikes it (10).

Lopez's illustrations enhance Engle's vibrant words. He uses rich, saturated colors to bring the reader into Milo's dreams and Cuba's setting. Lopez evokes the dream qualities stunningly. On pages 27-28, he paints Milo drumming the moon atop a stack of drums. The whimsically painted moon represents for us the "big, round, silvery/ moon-bright timbales" (27). He also does a great job of portraying the ethnically diverse culture of Cuba. On one page he paints the jewel-toned colors of the Carnival dancers on stilts, and, on the next, he paints the warm colors of the Chinese dragon and its drummers who are all part of the same festival: a marvelous mix of colors and cultures (19-22).

Highlighted Poem

I chose this particular stanza because it showcases Engle's figurative language. It also is a great example of how well Lopez's illustrations complement the poetry and bring the island and Milo's dreams to vivid reality (17-18).

When she walked under

wind-wavy palm trees

in a flower-bright park

she heard the whir of parrot wings

the clack of woodpecker beaks

the dancing tap

of her own footsteps

and the comforting pat

of her own

heartbeat.

Assonance, consonance, alliteration, and onomatopoeia all dance together in this stanza while Milo dances across the page in this picture. A beautiful pairing.

Use

Students will read this story. Then we will make our own drums, using these instructions. After practicing on our drums, we will read this story again, adding beats from our drums.