In Isla to Island, the debut graphic novel by Alexis Castellanos, arriving on March 15th, 2022 from Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, readers will follow the story of Marisol. 

Forced to leave Cuba due to bloody revolution, Marisol moves to a new location: New York City. As the story unfolds, Marisol must redefine what “home” means to her. 

Isla to Island

Isla to Island is set in the early 1960s and follows Marisol as she immigrates from her place of birth in Cuba to her new home in the United States. While Isla to Island is a work of fiction, Castellanos writes in an afterword that Marisol’s journey was inspired by the experiences of the creator’s family, and a real-life program called “Operation Peter Pan.” This two-year endeavor clandestinely moved children from Cuba to the U.S. to escape the possibility that they might be sent to prison camps.

This mostly-wordless graphic novel utilizes color in order to convey Marisol’s perspective to the reader. While the world at home in Cuba is colorful and filled with vibrant colors, when Marisol arrives in Brooklyn, she finds it to be gray and washed-out. 

How can Marisol recapture the vibrancy of her life in Cuba? Will she ever be able to better relate to her foster parents, especially when there is a language barrier between them? And how can someplace that’s so far from everything that’s familiar become home?

Available March 15th 

This gorgeous graphic novel will be available at a bookstore or public library near you beginning on Tuesday, March 15th, 2022, but you can get your first look at the story right here at The Beat below this article.

Will you be picking up a copy of Isla to Island when it arrives in two weeks? What do you think of the color in the preview pages below? The Beat is waiting to hear from you! Give us a shout out, either right here in the comment section or over on social media @comicsbeat.

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