The story is vintage Americana. It’s about an eight-year old girl coming from Brazil to Georgia and making a new friend who believed in her. Sabrina Santos and her mother Erica moved to Conyers, a small community outside Atlanta, three years ago.
Sabrina is fortunate. Her mother married a successful businessman, Paul Shipton and met a good-hearted neighbor, Pat Sabatelle, a retired Atlanta business executive. Ms. Sabatelle and husband Michael live near Sabrina and her family in a lakeside Conyers community.
Sabrina Enjoys Her New Book
“Sabrina and Erica,” said Ms. Sabatelle, “spoke Portuguese and very little English. Sabrina told me when she entered school she couldn’t understand anything her classmates said to her,” adding that “she is very smart and learned English very quickly with the help of her family and the resource teacher at her school.”
Ms. Sabatelle described Sabrina as a bright, high energy eight year-old. “She loves to read and swim. We started to read together when her mother thought Sabrina might be falling behind in her reading. She would join me after school to read. If she came upon a word she didn’t know we would say it, then write it 3 times so she would learn new words and how to spell them.”
Sabrina’s fascination with reading and her accomplished high reading level inspired a gift from her friend Pat Sabatelle: the just published children’s book, “The Great American Pie Contest,” by Georgia artist Olivia Thomason (Austin Macauley, New York, 2022). Sabrina loved the story and the original art work. “It was a funny book,” said Sabrina, “because of the mouse. He learned not to be greedy and eat too much because he got very fat. There was a good lesson at the end of the book….don’t be disappointed, never give up. Just try again. I would recommend [it] to my classmates because it is a fun book and they will learn new words like I did.”
A fascinating children’s book, a new friend and reading lessons from a devoted mentor. The reward: a child is off to a great start in her adoptive country.
