A teenager discovers racism and romance on his father's farm in author Cynthia DeFelice's Under the Same Sky. For his fourteenth birthday, Joe Pedersen wants a motorbike that costs nearly a thousand dollars. But his mom says the usual birthday gift is fifty dollars, and his dad wants Joe to earn the rest of the money himself and "find out what a real day's work feels like." Angry that his father doesn't think he's up to the job, Joe joins the Mexican laborers who come to his father's farm each summer. Manuel, the crew boss, is only sixteen, yet highly regarded by the other workers and the Pedersen family. Joe's resentment grows when his father treats Manuel as an equal. Compared with Manuel, Joe knows nothing about planting and hoeing cabbage and picking strawberries. But he toughs out the long, grueling days in the hot sun, determined not only to make money but to gain the respect of his stern, hardworking father. Joe soon learns about the problems and fears the Mexicans live with every day, and, before long, thanks to Manuel, his beautiful cousin Luisa, and the rest of the crew, Joe comes to see the world in a whole different way. In her sensitive novel, Cynthia DeFelice explores our dependency on migrant workers and simultaneous reluctance to let these people into our country and into our lives. Under the Same Sky is a Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year. “Will make readers think twice about their own prejudices.” ― VOYA “With sensitivity and self-deprecating humor and reflection, Joe narrates a well-paced story that illuminates the need for understanding, tolerance, and discussion of the role and rights of migrant workers in the United States.” ― School Library Journal “Offers much to absorb and stimulate readers . . . [DeFelice] engineers a dramatic climax that allows Joe to demonstrate real courage - and that will let readers grapple with the notion that right and wrong are not always easily identifiable.” ― Publishers Weekly “Suspense and romance keep the story going, at the same time that DeFelice conveys the vital work of migrant workers in U.S. agriculture and draws attention to problems with immigration policies.” ― Kirkus Reviews Cynthia DeFelice was the author of many bestselling titles for young readers, including the novels Wild Life , The Ghost of Cutler Creek , Signal , and The Missing Manatee , as well as the picture books, One Potato, Two Potato , and Casey in the Bath . Her books were nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award and listed as American Library Association Notable Children's Books and Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year, among numerous other honors. Cynthia was born in Philadelphia in 1951. As a child, she was always reading. Summer vacations began with a trip to the bookstore, where she and her sister and brothers were allowed to pick out books for their summer reading. “To me,” she said, “those trips to the bookstore were even better than the rare occasions when we were given a quarter and turned loose at the penny-candy store on the boardwalk.” Cynthia worked as a bookseller, a barn painter, a storyteller, and a school librarian. She and her husband lived in Geneva, New York. She died at age seventy-two in 2024. Under the Same Sky By Cynthia DeFelice Farrar, Straus and Giroux Copyright © 2003 Cynthia DeFelice All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-374-48065-3 CHAPTER 1 The X-treme Sportz catalog in the back pocket of my jeans was folded open to the page I planned to show my parents, if I ever got the chance to talk. All through dinner, Mom had been going on and on about the big reunion her family held every July, and how she hoped we could go this year. As soon as Mom finished, my little sister, Meg, started in on the end-of-year festivities at the elementary school. "Then we do the three-legged race," she was saying. "Jen and I won it together last year, so we've been practicing. Then ..." I tried to tune out her eager voice and concentrate on a smooth way to bring up the subject of my fourteenth birthday — and the motorbike I wanted my parents to buy me. I hoped it wasn't too late. My birthday was tomorrow. But I hadn't known what I wanted until that morning at school, when my friend Randy Vogt showed me the picture of the Thunderbird. I had to make clear to my parents that it wasn't simply a question of wanting the bike. I really needed it if I wasn't going to die of boredom over summer vacation. The way I figured it, getting me the bike was the least my parents could do. Nobody had ever asked me if I wanted to grow up on a farm eight miles from town, in the middle of nowhere. My dad was born here, and so were his father and grandfather and probably his great-grandfather, too. Dad's younger sisters, my Aunt Kay and Aunt Mary, had both married farmers and lived nearby with their husbands, Uncle Bud and Uncle Arnie. I guess none of them minded living out in the sticks, but I hated it. Town was where all the action was.