About Kid Quixote: A Group of Students, Their Teacher, and the One-Room School Where Everything Is Possible

Still Waters in a Storm is an after-school program held in a small room in Bushwick, Brooklyn; it is a place for kids to practice reading and writing in English, Spanish, and Latin. For the students, many living in constant fear of deportation, Still Waters is a refuge. For Stephen Haff, a former public-school teacher, it is the sanctuary he built following a breakdown caused by bipolar depression. At Still Waters, all agreed that there would only be one rule: "Everyone listens to everyone." And this has unlocked spectacular potential.

Since 2016, the students have been collectively translating Don Quixote into English, taking the Spanish tale--a story about a dreamer who never gives up--and adapting it into a bilingual musical. Six-year old Sarah tells of her mother's journey across the desert from Mexico riding on the back of a tiger. Alex, a very private teenager, sings her coming out song to standing ovations. As the kids perform their work across NYC, they learn that they belong in this country--their voices amplifying to deliver a message of diversity, love, hope, and resilience essential to us all. (HarperOne)

Stephen Haff is the founder of Still Waters in a Storm, a one-room school serving Spanish-speaking immigrant children in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Previously, he taught English at a public school in Bushwick for nearly a decade. He earned his MFA in Theater Studies at Yale, and has made a living directing plays and writing essays for the Village Voice and other publications. Stephen lives in Queens with his wife, children’s book author Tina Schneider, and their three children.

Cristina Henríquez is the author of The Book of Unknown Americans, which was a New York Times Notable Book of 2014, a longlist finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. She is also the author The World In Half (a novel), and Come Together, Fall Apart: A Novella and Stories, which was a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection. Her stories and non-fiction work have appeared in The New Yorker,  The Atlantic, The American Scholar, The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and more.

Stephen Haff presents "Kid Quixote" with Cristina Henríquez