The North is a Chimera is a fascinating examination of one Latin American family’s encounter with U.S. culture as temporary residents of a small Midwestern university town. Told from the perspective of Victoria, a middle school student, the book offers a critical glimpse of a cultural crossroads in which the issues of cultural differences, the conception of home, and what it means to belong to a community in terms of language, human connection, and, ultimately, acceptance of self and others is examined in the authentic voice of young girl who is trying to determine who she is and where she and her family “belong” in the world.

The story is told using rich language and imagery that is accessible to listeners of all ages, and the format of the book as a series of vignettes offers succinct and immediate entrée into the narrator’s world at any point in the novel. This novel is important not just for the insights it offers to U.S. listeners into their own culture from an “outsider’s” perspective, but also for the insights it offers into Victoria’s own struggles to accept and understand the cultures of her friends from varied cultural backgrounds, as well as her own Venezuelan culture viewed from a physical and emotional distance.

Critical literacy classrooms with a multicultural focus will greatly benefit from including The North is a Chimera in their curricula, whether that classroom is English or Spanish speaking, and listeners of all ages will relate to the authenticity and honesty of Jose Miguel Plata Ramirez’s prose.