Caminar is a true-to-life book written carefully and perfectly by Skila Brown.  Set in the year 1981, Brown gives readers a first hand account of the Guatemalan Civil War through the eyes of a child.  Written in her own unique style of poetry while staying true to traditional poetic novels, she uses spacing, italicization and onomatopoeic words, leading readers along the wild journey of a boy named Carlos.

In Caminar, Carlos is forced to run and abandon his own village for his own safety.  The army is bombing and destroying villages, and he ends up having a dream that is all too true.  The dream that he is having is it’s own poem, called “asleep.” Skila Brown shows the italicization she uses throughout the book as Carlos’ own thinking.  Reading just a little bit of this poem can show how a good portion of the book is written, so, here it is:

“I stand on the edge

of the branch and dive

stretch my arms out wide

enough to glide

fly.”

Brown implements not only just italicization in the book, but a huge variety of different spacings in poems.  In my opinion, this is great for the book, but it’s even better for writers of the future because it shows the writers of the future that they can write differently from other authors and writers.  One example of this from Caminar is the poem “Eye to Eye.”  Carlos meets another character, around his age, and they are thinking the same thing about each other, just in reverse, for example: Carlos’ first two thoughts of the boy were “In front of me/I too saw,” and the boy’s thoughts were “I see/in front of me.”

Skila Brown has written such a creative poetic novel that you may have to read over each poem several times to understand it.  Once you understand her way of writing, you see the book in a whole different way. You have to be clever to understand her development of the novel, and most times I found myself re-reading in order to grasp the many elements of her style.  Be encouraged to keep reading and try to see the story in a different way. As you develop understanding of her style, it may be helpful to reread a few poems back.