During the Mexican Revolution, a heroic mother, Elena, struggles to protect her family after her husband dies from an accident, and she feels powerless to act until she encounters Pancho Villa and his soldiers at her door. Elena decides to leave Mexico in order to find a safe place for her family as well as to provide them with an education, so her family can prosper, and takes her family to California for a new life filled with opportunities. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Trophies, 2005)

This lesson was created as part of the Basal Alignment Project, during which teachers created CCSS-aligned lessons for existing literary and information texts in basal readers. All page numbers and unit/week designations found in this lesson relate to the edition of the basal reader named above. If you are using a trade book or different edition of this title, the page/unit/week references in this lesson will not match. Consult the content referenced in the body of the lesson to determine appropriate page numbers for your text.