I really liked this book. It’s not the type of thing that I’m usually into – young adult novels written in verse? Not really my thing. But “Clap When You Land” was striking and heart-wrenching and it was all wrapped up in loss and finding out that your parent was so much more than the parent you knew.
Yahaira lives in New York with her mother and father. Her father goes to the Dominican Republic, where her family is from, every summer for business. When he dies in a plane crash, she finds that she has a sister in the Dominican Republic, who is close to her age, who she never knew about. Her sister, Camino, lost her mother and now lives with her aunt, and sees her father every summer when he comes home from working in New York.
The process of Camino and Yahaira meeting, then Yahaira going to the Dominican Republic to meet her sister, is one of family secrets unraveling, and the sisters finding each other in the midst of a huge loss.
Things you can buy
with half a million dollars:a car that looks more
like a space creature than a car.A designer platinum purse
to carry a small dog. A small dog.A performance by your favorite
musical artist for your birthday.A diamond-encrusted
bottle of Dominican rum.A mansion. A yacht. A hundred
acres of land. Houses, but not homes.All four years of college
or beautician school & certificate.Five hundred flights
to the Dominican Republic.A half million Dollar Store chess sets,
with their accompanying boxes.A hundred thousand copies
of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.Apparently a father.