Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

Secundino Fernandez was never quite in sync with his peers; when he was six years old, his gaze was generally directed to the buildings in his beloved city of Havana, and when a family emergency relocated the Fernandezes temporarily to Spain, Dino found the dustier terrain and repressive atmosphere of the Franco regime depressing. Even his mother recognized something was amiss when he lost interest in drawing buildings, an activity that had engrossed him back home. Upon their return in 1956, however, Cuba wasn't quite the same; first the criminal underground pressured Dino's father to change his line of business, then in 1959 the Castro regime put the family restaurant in jeopardy. The Fernandez family took the next possible flight out to the United States, with no time for goodbyes. Buffeted by the numbing cold and equally chilly reception in his New York public school, Dino took solace in constructing from drawings and memory a huge, detailed "map" [End Page 102] of Havana, until a new friend and the discovery of the salty air at Coney Island helped him adjust to a new homeland. Like Peter Sís' The Wall (BCCB 10/07), another biography of an artist (as an adult, Dino became an architect) growing up under communism, this illuminates not just the loving bond with native place but also the wrenching circumstances that clinch the decision to emigrate. Readers might naturally be curious to view some of the artwork Fernandez produced in his younger years, but no mention is made of whether such work is extant. However, the oil illustrations, tropical Norman Rockwell with a gently satiric edge bathed in a retrospective golden glow, ably convey Dino's celebration of Havana and his trepidation in unfamiliar surroundings, while additional pencil spot art provides decorative vignettes. Notes on Wells' authorial collaboration with Fernandez and several family photographs are included.