I have a low tolerance for authors who write in the voice of child narrators, so that impaired my enjoyment of this book, as did the fact that the first 1/3 went much too slowly. That being said, I think the author did a great job of executing on her goal, which was to draw parallels between the vulnerability of children travelling alone, and to help us empathize with the terrifying journey of immigrant children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border alone. She also raised interesting questions about what it means to record factual information, and the way that adding information to our historical archive illuminates what gets left out. I still felt the book was a slog to get through, and I kept having to force myself to return to it, hence the 2-star rating.