PEDRO PAN: One Boy's Journey to America Will Stream From Adventure Theatre This Weekend

This week, Adventure Theatre MTC's Sunday StoryTime explore's one child's coming to the United States in Michelle McNiff's Pedro Pan: One Boy's Journey to America. Based on historic events, this story tells the tale of a 12-year-old boy's journey from Cuba to the United States in a secret operation of freedom flights that delivered more than 14,000 unaccompanied children from oppression and tyranny.

Pedro Pan is a story of country, culture, and the resilience of an immigrant boy and his family. Ringing in the New Year in 1959, Pedro Infante observes history unfolding as change slowly sweeps through Havana. At the noble sacrifice of his parents in 1961, Pedro and Pepe (his pet lizard) board an airplane from the city of Havana to a rural farm in Iowa. The vivid imagination of one boy, flying away like Peter Pan with the loving care of a farmer and his wife, he learns English and takes on new chores, meeting a dairy cow, Bella Lou; Tucker, the prized pig; the old barn owl; and the farmer's scarecrow. Will he return to Cuba one day? Will he ever reunite with his family again?

Author Michelle McNiff wrote the book after interviewing Monsignor Walsh, the leading force behind the Pedro Pan Operation, which sent some 15,000 children to the United States of America. The book is dedicated to her Cuban-American relatives and Hispanic culture, and to all the "Pedro Pans" who took freedom flights to America.

Executive Team, Leon Seemann, Margo Brenner Collins, and Chil Kong welcome a friend of Adventure who is highly committed to the well-being of children through literature and theatre. Says Kong, "Michelle brings her own Cuban heritage and her travels to her telling of this rarely told story."

Storytime at Adventure will premiere free on Facebook-live on June 6, 2021 at 2PM ET. For more information or to donate, visit www.adventuretheatre-mtc.org or call 301-634-2270.