The Day of Yesterday — Edna Iturralde

We all have moments in our lives that seem to get lost in time and space - and that's what award winning author Edna Iturralde writes about in The Day of Yesterday. For Daniela, the young protagonist of this adventure, it's when she painfully discovers that her life as she once knew it had stopped in the past. Through no fault of her own, she has contracted HIV AIDS, a fact that leads to her being ostracized by her classmates, dismissed from her school and sent to a health center. There, with the help of a Spanish missionary, she and other children with HIV AIDS manage to create a new life. But soon her group of friends convinces her to run away with them to the United States in order to offer themselves for experiments that might lead to a cure for their disease. From the moment that they manage to obtain money to pay a "coyote," who arranges their transportation in the hold of a container ship, to their ultimately harrowing escape from drug runners, adventure, mystery and a touch of romance combine to make this story impossible to put down. In time, Daniela and some of her friends are rescued and returned to their families having learned the hard way the value of friendship and loyalty. They also have come to recognize that it is the present that counts; that each one of us owns a star, our very own star, with our name written on it, so that when we are gone, we will always be remembered. The Day of Yesterday is Volume 1 in the Realities of Living in the 21st Century Series from WPR Books: Para los Niños.