Bound to Dream: An Immigrant Story and The Magic Box: A Book of Opposites 

By Charles Ghigna  

Schiffer Publishing  

Hardback: $18.99 and $14.99 

Genre: Children’s 

Reviewed by Barbara Barcellona Smith  

Cover of Bound to Dream shows an illustrated child holding a book in the center of a street, with building on either side. The setting appears to be the late 1800s. Books appear like birds in the sky above the child.

My great pleasure in reviewing author Charles Ghigna’s two newest books comes from a mutual respect and admiration for our shared cultural histories. Charles’ great-grandfather and my own father both immigrated to America from Italy. Their stories of hardship, grit, and determination contributed to the fabric of our own lives and continue to contribute to the greater fabric of our multicultural society through the stories we write. Bound to Dream: An Immigrant Story endears us all to our familial beginnings.   

Charles Ghigna was born in New York City and now lives in Homewood, Alabama.  He has written over 100 books, including The Father Goose Treasury of Poetry, The Magic Box: A Book of Opposites, A Poem Is a Firefly, and, of course, Bound to Dream: An Immigrant Story.  His more than 5,000 poems for children and adults have appeared in newspapers, magazines, and anthologies. He speaks at conferences, schools, libraries, and literary events throughout the U.S. and overseas. 

Embraced by the warm glow of candlelit illustrations, Ghigna transports young readers to the 1800s, where they follow the journey of young Italian immigrant Carlo from the small, forested village where he milked cows and chopped wood by day and honed his love for adventure and far-away places by night, reading the soft, leathery books he cherished in his small hands. His journey continues as Carlo, older now, bravely embarks across the great Atlantic for a better life in New York. Charles Ghigna’s eloquent and transformative words gorgeously and hauntingly capture the immigrant sentiment. His heartfelt, true story allows children to feel everything from Carlo’s excitement and hope for a better future, to his fear and language-restricted loneliness in a new country, and finally to his victory in perseverance as he finds a job learning the beautiful art of bookbinding. Ghigna masterfully shares his Italian history, heritage, and culture. Bound to Dream: An Immigrant Story teaches children to bravely pursue their dreams, all the while emphasizing our humanly embedded desire to belong.      

Cover of the Magic Box, showing an illustrated panda opening a decorative box. Cherry blossoms are in the foreground a tree is in the background.

Equally enchanting, Charles Ghigna captivates early readers with The Magic Box: A Book of Opposites. Children delight in following along with Pandora the Panda as she curiously discovers the joys of Days and Nights, the wonders of Big and Small, and the sensations of Hot and Cold!  Ghigna cleverly creates an easy learning rhythm with help from the ever-endearing perfect example of opposites – Black and White Pandora! Illustrator Jacqueline East takes a tough concept and draws it easy with her whimsical strokes of colorful genius, putting into visual form the abstract reality of opposites. Young readers can see, feel, and even hear East’s illustrations come to life in Ghigna’s cleverly written tale of two sides. 

Charles Ghigna’s newest books, Bound to Dream: An Immigrant Story and The Magic Box: A Book of Opposites, triumph in the telling as he masterfully reaches young and early readers alike with poignant elegance and fanciful frivolity. Carlo’s endearing immigrant story and Pandora’s enchanting adventures prove two meaningful and worthy reads for the family this fall.     

 

Barbara Barcellona Smith 

Author, Let’s Eat Snails