Barbed Wire Between Us

• ⭐ Starred review from Kirkus

• ⭐ Starred review from Publishers Weekly

• Kirkus: The Most Anticipated Children's Books of Spring 2026
   

A powerful poem about two girls separated by barbed wire and 80 years of history

Barbed Wire Between Us is a powerful reverso poem that tells two deeply resonant stories across time. It begins with a Japanese American girl sent to an internment camp in Oklahoma during World War II. Read in reverse, it reveals the journey of a Latina girl detained in the very same camp decades later, during the U.S. policy of migrant family separation.

Harrowing and emotionally charged, this poetic narrative compels us to confront a haunting question: What have we truly learned in the past 80 years about how we treat the most vulnerable among us?

With haunting symmetry and striking parallels, Barbed Wire Between Us is a moving meditation on justice, memory, and the echoes of history that still shape our present.