A short but powerful collection illuminates the journeys of eleven young people who immigrated to the United States due to dangerous situations in their home countries. Whether traveling atop trains or by car, foot, or bus; in cramped luggage compartments beneath buses; in cabs or empty semi trailers; across freezing rivers or shuttled from vehicle to vehicle; the children and teens in these stories are all in search of safety and stability. Many stories focus on their effort to get here, but others shed light on their experiences before or after they immigrate, including time spent in the “freezer” or temporary “homes” after crossing the border. Other stories recount the dangers that drove these young people to leave home. The collection is compelling and heartbreaking in its depiction of children who have no choice but to flee their homes for a safer place, even if the journeys may prove fatal. (Age 12 and older)

Award-winning Mexican author Juan Pablo Villalobos explores illegal immigration with this emotionally raw and timely nonfiction book about ten Central American teens and their journeys to the United States.

You can't really tell what time it is when you're in the freezer.

Every year, thousands of migrant children and teens cross the U.S.-Mexico border. The journey is treacherous and sometimes deadly, but worth the risk for migrants who are escaping gang violence and poverty in their home countries. And for those refugees who do succeed? They face an immigration process that is as winding and multi-tiered as the journey that brought them here.

In this book, award-winning Mexican author Juan Pablo Villalobos strings together the diverse experiences of eleven real migrant teenagers, offering readers a beginning road map to issues facing the region. These timely accounts of courage, sacrifice, and survival—including two fourteen-year-old girls forming a tenuous friendship as they wait in a frigid holding cell, a boy in Chicago beginning to craft his future while piecing together his past in El Salvador, and cousins learning to lift each other up through angry waters—offer a rare and invaluable window into the U.S.–Central American refugee crisis.

In turns optimistic and heartbreaking, The Other Side balances the boundless hope at the center of immigration with the weight of its risks and repercussions. Here is a necessary read for young people on both sides of the issue.