Review of Informational Book: Building an Orchestra of Hope: How Favio Chavez Taught Children to Make Music From Trash


Summary:
Favio Chavez is an environmental engineer who also happens to be a musician and music lover. When environmental work took him to Cateura, Paraguay, he was startled to find that the village had been built on a landfill with families -- including children-- living amongst the area's discarded things. Wanting to offer the children living in the landfill the hope, discipline, and beauty that comes from creating music, he enlisted another engineer to help him make instruments from the landfill supplies.

Criteria: 
Building an Orchestra of Hope fit all the criteria I was looking for: I had not read it previously and it was published in the last 10 years. It also received positive reviews from Booklist,  Horn Book Magazine, and School Library Journal Xpress. On a personal note, hope is my favorite word and I was curious what an orchestra of hope would be. This book did not disappoint.

Response:
Character:
Favio Chavez is the subject of this informational biography, and not a character in a fictional book, but I am drawn to him all the same. I appreciate that he knew that music would offer this village some beauty and hope in a stark time. Favio Chavez could have become discouraged seeing all the other things the village needed: clean water, medical care, stable housing. Instead, he figured out what he did have to offer and created a way to make it happen.

Setting:
A literal dump. A landfill. People live there. It's hard to imagine. I have a friend who does mission trips to Honduras and every year when they are there they have a party/ feast at the dump to feed the residents who live there. I'm so grateful for the people who will take action and "do what you can, where you are, with what you have." It won't change the trajectory of poverty, but it will brighten someone's day in the moment. I feel like that is what Favio Chavez did with his orchestra-- let musicians know that there was something beyond the dump to strive for.

Illustrations: 
The illustrations in this book are delightful. The bright colors used truly portray the hope that Favio Chavez was trying to convey. They are mainly bright colors with some smudgy looking parts that remind us the setting for this actually is in a dump. 

Oliver, C., & Uribe, L. (2022). Building an orchestra of hope: How Favio Chávez taught children to make music from trash. Eerdmans Books for Young Readers.

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