Rita Baumann

Winds Around the Caribbean Rita Baumann

Winds Around the Caribbean is a multicultural smorgasbord of childhood adventures, rich in sibling interaction, family solidarity, and friendly creativity. This book vividly relates the long-forgotten oral folklore of story-telling as an educational tool. In all of the stories young children are mentored by their elders to use their time constructively and always for the betterment of the family. In the story "Big Cid" for instance, home alone pre-adolescents find themselves confronted with a formidable animal opponent who threatens their mere existence. Left to their own creativity, these children fend off their attacker until real help arrives home."Granny Rose" features a ninety plus years matriarch in the United States Virgin Islands' extended family domain who, despite her sunset years, daily engages the young minds of her great-grand children around her with awesome and bewitching stories. The most appealing features of this matriarch's stories are the down-to-earth reasoning factors which compel her listeners to tweak their senses and solve-ability skills."My Little Sara" spotlights a little Chinese-American girl in Florida who, through home learning, makes her first day in kindergarten seem nothing short of amazing, amidst the anxiety of meeting strange new children, making friends, and enjoying her debut into her education."T'aint Every Skinteeth is a Laugh "dabbles in the realm of magic and mystery as performed by a seemingly normal island visitor in the beautiful United States Virgin Islands, where beauty can sometimes be more than skin-deep, and all that meets the eye oftentimes has a lot more hidden behind a smile. As children of yore had to rely more upon their imagination for their own amusement and fun than their contemporary counterparts, "Yellow Plum" navigates around the backyard of the author's childhood playground. In this story, four neighboring siblings attempt to explore the high seas, much to their dismay, disappointment, and near disastrous e