Imagine

Imagine is a 2018 poetic memoir by Latino poet, performance artist, teacher, and activist, Juan Felipe Herrera. The picture book-length poem is illustrated by Lauren Castillo. Imagine describes how young Juan, the son of migrant farmworkers, conquers challenges, develops his love for words and language, and ultimately becomes Poet Laureate of the United States. Herrera messages readers of all ages, that if he can do all these things, just imagine what they can achieve. Imagine received starred reviews from Kirkus, School Library Journal, and Publisher’s Weekly. The book was chosen by the National Education Association as a Read Across America pick, and listed as an ALSC Notable Children’s Book for 2019.

Juan Felipe Herrera served as the twenty-first United States Poet Laureate, from 2015-2017. He was the first Latino to hold the position. Herrera has written more than 30 books, including poetry collections, short stories, children’s picture books, and young adult novels. Herrera’s work is influenced by Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, and “the father of Chicano theater” Luis Valdez. Dana Gioia, former chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts, says that many of Herrera’s poems “are designed primarily for spoken delivery.”

Imagine is written in free verse—verse that typically does rhyme or have a regular meter—but each stanza is structured with a consistent opening and closing. Each begins “If I…” and concludes with “imagine.” The final line, “imagine,” is written in a larger font-size and unpunctuated. Herrera uses figurative language to give his carefully chosen words more power. Each stanza depicts a significant memory from Herrera’s life that prompts him to question “if” and to explore possibilities in that impactful moment with the concluding word “imagine.”



Except in two instances, each stanza stands by itself on expansive, two-page illustrative spreads. Illustrator Lauren Castillo, a winner of a Caldecott Honor award for her work in Nana in the City, utilizes a pen and foam monoprint technique to add texture to the spacious illustrations in Imagine. Castillo uses tans, browns, and warm earth-toned colors along with luminous blues and greens to illuminate Herrera’s life events. Bright pops of red emphasize significant items like Juan’s wagon, his backpack, his book of poetry, and his poet laureate’s robe. Dark black outlines around figures make them stand out against the soft backgrounds.

As Herrera’s memoir begins, he is a young child, when he picked chamomile flowers “and whispered / to their fuzzy faces,” and let tadpoles swim over his hands in a “wavy creek.” He must leave his village and say goodbye to his “amiguitos.” He sleeps outside at night, watching as the stars “paint my blanket with milky light / with shapes of hungry birds.” At the end of the fourth stanza, “imagine” changes to “imagine what you could do.” This final refrain then returns to “imagine” until the last line of the poem. Juan helps his mother feed the chickens in his new village and walks to the next town for water in the darkening light. He moves to a city with tall buildings and attends a new “concrete” school. There, Juan doesn’t know how to read or speak English. He learns by practicing saying English words aloud. As Juan lyrically describes these formative events in his life, Castillo’s illustrations show him getting taller and growing up.

Juan loves the way ink moves and flows over the paper, and he collects pens, using them to write stories from the new words he learns. Juan describes how he “grabbed” them and “sprinkled them over a paragraph.” He sings in front of class for the first time and writes poems as he walks home from school. With his “honey-colored guitar,” Juan turns his poetry into songs. He takes his songs and more words “and let them fly / over my mesa” into a book of poems. At last, as Poet Laureate, adult Juan stands on the steps of the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, and reads his words aloud to a crowd that includes his family. The final line of the poem “imagine what you could do” stands alone on a two-page painting of a desert landscape depicted in blues and greys under a starry sky and full moon. Using himself as an example, Herrera encourages everyone to overcome their own personal challenges and explore the possibilities that arise.