Guatemala

The start of __Red Midnight__ is about a boy named Santiago Cruz and a girl named Angelina Cruz. Their village gets attacked by solders that try to kill everybody, but Santiago and his sister get away. Then the soldiers burned down the village. When he and his sister are running, they see their uncle and he tells them to go to the U.S. He tells them to go to their uncle's house. They start the journey by going through the mountains and getting a ride by a truck. They get in the truck without the drunk driver knowing. After they get to their stop, he does not know what to do, so they find poop in the boxes, he starts putting poop in the gas tank, and Angelina starts to give him the poop, and slowly the truck starts to slow down. As soon as they get to their uncle's house they fall a sleep. In the morning Enrique, a friend of Ramos, find Santiago and his sister, Angelina, in the house. At first they do not know who they are. After they explain why and that Uncle Ramos sent them to his house for you to teach them how to get to the U.S. Then he gave them food and told him every thing he knows about the trip. Enrique stayed with them until they reached the sea because if the U.S found him they would send him right back with the children. When they were on the sea they ran into a lot of troubles along the way like. They found islands, but the one that they stopped at was one that had pirates. When Angelina and Santiago were sleeping the pirates came on the beach. They did not see the children. The pirates started to get drunk and when they got knocked out they tried to leave. But the pirates heard them and he heard their boat motor. Santiago paddled an hard as he could and eventually got out of the lagoon. In the morning they saw dolphins swimming around the cayao. After that there was a lot of days ahead of them with storm when their cayaco flipped but that time they did not loose anything. After that storm Santiago tied empty water bottles to her so she would not drowned if it happen again. Santiago had a couple days were he really thought that he was dead and should not even try. But then knew he should because there is a better life in the U.S, and so that he can tell everyone about the massacre. The second storm they came across knocked the cayaco over and all the water ,dried fish ,coconuts. When he looked at Angelina the water bottles he tied to Angelina worked. Santiago held on to the cayaco for a long time and when the storm started to die down he flipped over the cayaco and used all his strength to get them both back into the boat. The next day they were very hungry and they had red spots on their backs and blisters the size of an apple. Then Angelina said she saw a flying fish and her brother thought she was lying but then one jumps in the boat and saves their lives. Day 23 at sea Santiago saw little lights at the horizon, and he paddles as hard as he can and gets closer and closer. They are finally at the shore line at a beach club. The ambulance takes them to the hospital. The next day the cops and reporters ask them a lot of question about how they got here and were they are from. The cops decided that they could stay in the U.S.

What I figure out about the Guatemala people in this book is that they have a lot of difficulties like they had very little food choices. There little village was slaughtered like a lot of other little villages in Guatemala because the Spanish thought that they could get away with killing all the little native villages. But when some people got away from them like Santiago and his sister Angelina they could spread the word that they were doing this and they should not get away with it. -Nathan

People had a hard time in Guatemala from the food resources to the soldiers constantly fighting them. Many people died and few escaped. In the story, they farm maize, which is basically corn. They speak two languages. They speak Spanish and a type of Mayan language. -Tom

This book was a good book because I like how it told you everything about what's going on. It explained how they made the truck stop to how they went to the bathroom, and even the details why he thought he was going to die.This book made me think that we have it really good here in the U.S. -Nathan This book was really good. The beginning started well, then got a bit slower and then picked up the pace. -Tom