Pedro Pan: One Boy's Journey to America

By Michelle Marie McNiff and Kurt Huggins

Pedro Pan, One Boy's Journey to America, is a tale of a 12-year-old boy's journey from Cuba to the United States. He takes part in a secret operation of more than 14,000 unaccompanied children, who take freedom flights to escape oppression and tyranny. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michelle Marie McNiff
• Release date: May 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9798988369400

Book preview

Pedro Pan:

One Boy’s Journey to America

Story by

Michelle Marie McNiff

Cover Art & Illustrations: Kurt Huggins

New Moon Media Group

New York

Pedro Pan: One Boy’s Journey to America

Second Edition

Copyright ©2021, 2022 Michelle McNiff. All Rights Reserved

Cover Art and Illustrations by Kurt Huggins

KurtHuggins.com

Published by New Moon Media Group

New York

This is a work of fiction. Any semblance between

original characters and real persons, living or dead

is coincidental. The author in no way represents

the companies, corporations, or brands mentioned

in this book. The likeness of historical/famous figures

have been used fictitiously; the author does not speak

for or represent these people. All opinions expressed

in this book are the author’s or fictional.

ISBN: 979-8-218-11215-8 Hardcover Illustrated

ISBN: 979-8-218-08245-1 Paperback

ISBN: 979-8-9883694-0-0 ebook

Printed in the United States of America

In memory of my beloved grandparents, mis Abuelos, Dr. Manuel Infante Ayala and Maria Josefa Conesa Infante, my aunt Tita Martha Infante Bailey, and Tia Teresa Giral Mosquera, and Tio Dr. Juan A. Giral. They escaped tyranny and oppression by fleeing Cuba, leaving their homes, family, and culture on a lost paradise the day they left Havana for America. This book is dedicated to all the Pedro Pan children, and my mother, Mercedes Infante, who took freedom flights without their parents. The real heroes of Operation Pedro Pan were the parents who had to make the ultimate sacrifice that any parent can make.

M.M.

Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.

Anne Frank

Pedro Pan:

One Boy’s Journey to America

Pedro was a young boy who lived near the seashore on a tropical island where the palm trees swayed in warm ocean breezes. The boy lived in Havana with his mother, father, and grandmother, Abuela as he called her. Their oceanfront home was a modest two-story blue house, the same robin egg color as his father’s two-door blue sedan.

Many of the houses were painted in splashes of vibrant colors. Pedro called the pink house next door the flamingo house, and the home down the street the yellow canary. The bright blue house in the middle of the street, on Calle 11, had swirly iron gates and terrazzo tiled floors that turned cold in the short winter days. The weather in Cuba was warm and humid most of the year. Pedro and his parents slept upstairs, and his grandmother slept alone downstairs. She had lived in the home her entire life and was now so old and frail she no longer had the strength in her knees to walk up and down the stairs. While Pedro’s grandmother had given birth to her children inside the home, Pedro was born at the hospital where his father worked.

One breezy morning, his grandmother sat on the front porch and knitted a quilt blanket. The neighborhood cats lounged beside her as she swung back and forth in her wooden rocking chair. The feral cats sunbathed on the porch, stretching, licking their paws, hoping to catch a songbird. Their eyes flickered from the porch to the balls of yarn tumbling inside her basket as she knitted. If a cat pounced at her yarn strings, Pedro’s grandmother would stop her stitching and reprimand the feline offender, No, no gato, no, no cat, no pounce.

To add emphasis to her order, she waved her arms abound, up and down, left to right, as if she were knitting in the air. No, no gato, no, no cat, no pounce, she repeated.

Pedro sat cross-legged next to her on the floor reading his picture