The Only Road

After a long and difficult journey, Ángela and Jaime finally make it to New Mexico. But is their journey really over? What lasting impacts might their trip north have on the cousins? Consider these questions as you formulate a response.

• What will they miss about their home country and their families?
• What traumatic experiences did they have on the trip that they might have a hard time getting over?
• What are some of the obstacles they might encounter in the US?

Teaching Suggestion: This prompt invites students to think not just about The Experience of Migration but also about the particular experience of unaccompanied minors journeying north from Guatemala and adjusting to life as undocumented migrants in the US. In responding, students will need to call on evidence from the book as well as their own understanding of the world. You can adjust the difficulty of this prompt by calling for more or less specific textual evidence to support students’ responses. If your students are responding in writing, you might call their attention to the order of the bulleted questions below the main body of the prompt and explain that this ordering suggests a chronological structure for their written response.

Differentiation Suggestion: Students with limited reading fluency or comprehension may struggle to gather evidence to support their answers.