The Book Prize Index

The Distance Between Us

Reyna Grande

Award-winning author Reyna Grande shares her compelling experience of crossing borders and cultures in this middle grade adaptation of her compelling unvarnished, resonant (BookPage) memoir,The Distance Between Us. When her parents make the dangerous and illegal trek across the Mexican border in pursuit of the American dream, Reyna and her siblings are forced to live with their stern grandmother, as they wait for their parents to build the foundation of a new life. But when things don t go quite as planned, Reyna finds herself preparing for her own journey to El Otro Lado to live with the man who has haunted her imagination for years: her long-absent father. Both funny and heartbreaking,The Distance Between Us beautifully captures the struggle that Reyna and her siblings endured while trying to assimilate to a different culture, language, and family life in El Otro Lado (The Other Side).

Memoir & AutobiographyMemoir & Autobiography · medium confidenceMemoir & Autobiography81 signalsLlm Classifier: Memoir & Autobiography -> Memoir & AutobiographyOpen Library: Mexican Americans -- Biography -- Juvenile literature -> BiographyOpen Library: Immigrants -- United States -- Biography -- Juvenile literature -> BiographyGroup BiographyMemoir & Personal HistoryImmigration, Refugees & Borderlands

Award History

0 wins · 1 total

AwardYearResultCategory / Notes
National Book Critics Circle Award for Memoir and AutobiographyMajor2012FinalistSecondary source
View all award history (1)
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies

This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact. Automated checks have flagged this profile for extra review.

  1. 01 Central figures

    • Reyna Grande86%

  2. 02 Central places

    None extracted with sufficient confidence.

    These suggestions did not meet the normal display threshold and are more likely to be wrong.

    • El Otro Lado62%
    • El Otro Lado (The Other Side)38%
    • American dream36%

  3. 03 Suggested argument

    No argument inferred with sufficient confidence.

    This suggestion did not meet the normal display threshold and is more likely to be wrong.

    Reyna Grande’s border-crossing family experiences shape her shift from waiting for her parents to preparing her own journey to El Otro Lado to live with her long-absent father.

    Model confidence 48%

  4. 04 Reading orientation

    35 / 100 academic

    Serious trade

    An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.

Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 74%.