Clap When You Land

Elizabeth Acevedo does it again, but I’m not surprised. Clap When You Land has all the heart of her other books, but it has something else too. While The Poet X and With the Fire on High revolve around imaginary people in familiar situations, there’s a historical event that drove Clap When You Land. It is heartbreaking and I’m glad Acevedo has brought attention to it. Altogether this is a wonderful, touching story about grief, discovery, fear, desperation, vulnerability, and acceptance.

Clap When You Land follows two young women – Camino and Yahaira – unknowing sisters separated by their father’s secrets and an entire country. Both love their father, and so, when the flight that takes him annually from New York to DR crashes show more without survivors, they are devastated. With nobody left to protect them, their father’s secrets begin to bubble to the surface and the girls are left to grapple with their grief and the discovery of one another.

This novel is all heart, deep and guttural at times, but filled with memory and desire and fear and love. It’s impossible to read it and not feel yourself a bit heartbroken. Camino’s perspective in particular was hard and heavy, having lost many more promises as well as her father. I appreciated watching the girls tiptoe around one another as they lowly peeled back the layers to learn about one another.

There are moments, too, where little details take over. These come when Yahaira talks about her early chess tournaments or when Dre shares her fire escape garden, or when Camino looks at the altar in their family home. Acevedo always brings her worlds to life in small, meaningful ways. Along with the depth of her characters, these little moments stay with me.

Clap When You Land was … I wouldn’t say “inspired by”, but maybe… “influenced by” American Airlines Flight 587. In November 2001, American Airlines Flight 587 crashed into Belle Harbor in Queens, killing everyone on board and five people on the ground. It was the second deadliest airplane crash in history. It was also one I’d never heard of, and that makes it worse. The crash, two months after September 11th, was deemed not to have been a terrorist attack and once that determination was made, the media lost focus. But Elizabeth Acevedo didn’t. This story was built on the memories and stories and grief of those in the community whose loved ones were lost. Acevedo honors those memories.

Even if you decide not to read this book – and you should read it, it’s excellent – please consider looking into American Airlines Flight 587 from New York to Santa Domingo on November 12th, 2001. One of Acevedo’s goals with Clap When You Land was to honor the dead by remembering them, and you can help her do that by learning their story. While Clap When You Land is fictional, the outlying story remains important. show less

Out financial necessity, Camino's father spends most of the year in the U.S. but always returns to the Dominican Republic to spend the summer with her. This year on the day he is supposed to arrive, however, word reaches her that his plane crashed just after liftoff. There were no survivors. In New York, Yahaira is reeling from her own loss when she receives another life-altering shock in the form of a message from Camino, a girl in the Dominican Republic who is apparently her half-sister.

I wasn't expecting the narrative to be in verse, but I kind of dug it. It's a story of devastation and loss, but also how one survives and manages to pick up the pieces again. The clever title will resonate with anyone who has experienced an applause show more landing. That collective, "We all survived!" moment is a special one. Recommended. show less

ackles family secrets, toxic masculinity, and socio-economic differences with incisive clarity and candor.

Camino Rios lives in the Dominican Republic and yearns to go to Columbia University in New York City, where her father works most of the year. Yahaira Rios, who lives in Morningside Heights, hasn’t spoken to her dad since the previous summer, when she found out he has another wife in the Dominican Republic. Their lives collide when this man, their dad, dies in an airplane crash with hundreds of other passengers heading to the island. Each protagonist grieves the tragic death of their larger-than-life father and tries to unravel the tangled web of lies he kept secret for almost 20 years. The author pays reverent tribute to the show more lives lost in a similar crash in 2001. The half sisters are vastly different—Yahaira is dark skinned, a chess champion who has a girlfriend; Camino is lighter skinned, a talented swimmer who helps her curandera aunt deliver neighborhood babies. Despite their differences, they slowly forge a tenuous bond. The book is told in alternating chapters with headings counting how many days have passed since the fateful event. Acevedo balances the two perspectives with ease, contrasting the girls’ environments and upbringings. Camino’s verses read like poetic prose, flowing and straightforward. Yahaira’s sections have more breaks and urgent, staccato beats. Every line is laced with betrayal and longing as the teens struggle with loving someone despite his imperfections.

A standing ovation. (Verse novel. 14-18)

-Kirkus Review show less

Trigger Warnings: Death of a parent, sexual assault, stalking, plane crash

Clap When You Land is a novel-in-verse, duo POV, about grief and love. Camino Rios' favorite time of the year is the summer when her father visits her in the Dominican Republic. But when his place is supposed to land, Camino is met at the airport to crowds of crying people. In New York City, Yahaira Rios is called into the principal's office, where her mother is waiting to tell her that her father died in a plane crash. Separated by distance - and their Papi's secrets - the two girls must face this new altered reality. But then, when it all seems like their father has completely disappeared, they learn of each other.

I lost my father suddenly myself at show more twelve-years-old, this book made me cry at what the girls were going through.

"For the rest of my life I will sit & imagine
what my father would say in any given moment.
& I will make him up:
his words, his advice, our memories."

I still do this, sixteen years later...

Both girls have their own struggles, but Camino especially does. Now that her father isn't alive to pay him off, the local pimp, a man called El Cero, begins following her around. All she wants to do is escape the island, go to New York to study premed, and have a chance at a better life than what she sees around her. Then, Yahaira finds her on social media and it changes everything she thought she knew about her father.

This was beautifully done - the girls discovering their father wasn't perfect, that their hero was complexed and flawed. Even though he was a good father, he wasn't the greatest husband. Both girls are matured by the intensity of their loss and the discoveries made afterwards and they take a lot of others grief into their own hands, especially Yahaira and her Mom.

I can't say enough praise for Elizabeth Acevedo and the way she cuts and merges words together. I use to be wary of books in verse form but the way Acevedo writes really makes you stop and think. It grips at your heart.

I will always highly recommend Acevedo to anyone to read.

"Never, ever, let them see you sweat, negra.
Fight until you can't breathe, & if you have to forfeit,
you forfeit smiling, make them think you let them win." show less

Just absolutely wonderful. Told from the rotating POV of two teenage girls, this novel explores what makes a person part of your family. When a plane crashes, two girls are left grieving for the father they lost. Aspiring doctor Camino, whose circumstances in the Dominican Republic limit her options, and Yahaira, a brilliant chess player in New York City. Both are equally fascinating, a tricky thing to accomplish when you bounce the narrative between characters. The family secret that ties the two together will change their worlds. The story is based on the real plane crash that killed 260 people in Nov. 2001. After reading both this and With the Fire on High, I will read anything Acevedo writes.

Heartfelt YA fiction from Elizabeth Acevedo, written in verse. The story is about how the two daughters of a man who died in a plane crash come to know about each other, because, you see, he’s kept two separate families, one in New York and the other in the Dominican Republic. On top of processing their devastating grief, conflicting emotions arise, all of which felt authentically told by Acevedo. The daughter in the DR dreams of going to America and becoming a doctor, but has limited resources, as well as the threat of a neighborhood creepoid trying to hook her into life as a prostitute. The daughter in America plays chess and has a supportive girlfriend who loves gardening, but had known of her father’s duplicity a year before he show more was killed, resulting in their estrangement. They are destined to meet, but it’s not clear how close they will become.

I found the verse form effective, allowing for a punctuation of feelings from the two girls as they go through this life-changing event while coming of age. It’s an easy read but the mix of feelings churned up are anything but simple. And while the characters are far removed from me personally, there is a universality about losing a parent, and these words hit hard:

“For the rest of my life I will sit & imagine
what my father would say in any given moment.

& I will make him up:
his words, his advice, our memories.”

Here’s another excerpt on death; I’ve resolved to carry a special coin with me:
“In history we learned
the Greeks made sure to die

with a coin in their pocket
to ensure their spirit could pay

for their way to the other side;
remembering this, I give Papi

the only kind of safe passage I have to offer…” show less

Absolutely did not expect to like it, let alone love it. I'm not into poetry, but Acevedo might have singlehandedly changed that. I love how she writes her characters, I find them insanely relatable despite having absolutely nothing in common with them. And she has this tendency to twist the knife in 10 words or less. The book is about 400 pages, and I have annotations on at least 350 of them.