When eleven-year-old Lolo captures a tarantula, it turns an ordinary summer into a series of adventures that take him and his friends beyond their Mexican-American neighborhood in East Los Angeles.
Lolo and Red-Legs
Author: Book Importer
¿de Veras?
For one month each year, the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque brings together New Mexico teens for a creative writing program that immerses them in a process of reflection and creativity while encouraging them to explore their identity as people, as a culture, as a region, and as a society. These students unite their varied experiences, backgrounds, and beliefs to form a supportive community of respect through conversation and writing.¿de Veras? (really?) features a collection of poems, essays, and stories written in the Voces program between 2002 and 2006 that represent the diversity of perspectives and individuality of voices of the young creators. These writings reflect the authors’ courage to examine their lives, their neighborhoods, their families, and their cultures. What emerges is their amazingly perceptive, sometimes damning, yet always-honest insights.
Crazy Loco
Lively, fascinating, and often laugh-out-loud funny, this short story collection provides an intimate glimpse into the life of Mexican American kids in South Texas. From the tale of a boy’s first crush to that of a girl who yearns to see more of the world, from the feud between Texas brothers and their California cousins to the exploits of a reluctant altar boy, from a poignant reminiscence about a family’s maid to a zany tale of a car-crazy dog, this collection is a whirlwind of insight and entertainment. Loosely based on the author’s own Mexican American childhood, Crazy Loco depicts a South Texas full of charm, humor and energy.
Featured in Volume VI, Issue 1 of WOW Review.
The Boy without a Flag: Tales of the South Bronx
The violent world of the underclass and the daily battle with hopeless poverty, drug addiction, and other urban horrors come vividly to life in a collection of stories about being young and desperate in the South Bronx. A first collection. Original.
Esperanza Rising
When Esperanza and Mama are forced to flee to the bountiful region of Aguascalientes, Mexico, to a Mexican farm labor camp in California, they must adjust to a life without fancy dresses adn servants they were accustomed to on Rancho de las Rosas. Now they must confront the challenges of hard work, acceptance by their own people, and economic difficulties brought on by the Great Depression. When Mama falls ill and a strike for better working conditions threatens to uproot their new life, Esperanza must relinquish her hold on the past learn to embrace a future ripe with the riches of family and community.
This book has been included in WOW’s Language and Learning: Children’s and Young Adult Fiction Booklist. For our current list, visit our Booklist page under Resources in the green navigation bar.
The Almost Murder and Other Stories
“Pops stormed his way down the hall in a pissed-off march–trouble on the move. A quick glance at his florid, contorted face told me he was smashed. I looked down at meat, spoon, dough–anything to avoid his bleary red eyes. The stench of booze sickened me. So did my father.” In the title story of this gritty collection for teens, a young girl remembers the night her father almost killed her mother. The peace that comes when her father is put in jail is short lived though, because in order to keep him behind bars she will have to testify against him in court. Can she be strong enough to overcome her fear? What if he leaps out of his chair and attacks her too? Can she do what needs to be done in order to keep her mother and grandmother safe? In Theresa Saldana’s first collection of stories for young adults, her characters confront issues relevant to all teens, from friendship to dreams for the future. Many, though, must overcome suffering–whether physical or emotional–that impacts their sense of security and well being. A teenager survives an auto accident that has left her with multiple disfiguring scars. Will she ever be able to really live again? A young high school student prepares to leave the safety of her neighborhood where her friends have accepted her the way she is–overweight. Will her new classmates at Hunter College be able to see who she really is inside her big body? Sure to intrigue young adult readers who will identify with numerous contemporary cultural references–from reality TV shows to computers and the Internet–the engrossing stories in this collection give voice to young Latinas who, like their counterparts everywhere, yearn to be “normal.”
He Forgot To Say Goodbye
“Ramiro Lopez and Jake Upthegrove don’t appear to have much in common. Ram lives in the Mexican-American working-class barrio of El Paso called “Dizzy Land.” His brother is sinking into a world of drugs, wreaking havoc in their household. Jake is a rich West Side white boy who has developed a problem managing his anger. An only child, he is a misfit in his mother’s shallow and materialistic world. But Ram and Jake do have one thing in common: They are lost boys who have never met their fathers. This sad fact has left both of them undeniably scarred and obsessed with the men who abandoned them. As Jake and Ram overcome their suspicions of each other, they begin to move away from their loner existences and realize that they are capable of reaching out beyond their wounds and the neighborhoods that they grew up in. Their friendship becomes a healing in a world of hurt.
Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood
As a Chicano boy living in the unglamorous town of Hollywood, New Mexico, and a member of the graduating class of 1969, Sammy Santos faces the challenges of “gringo” racism, unpopular dress codes, the Vietnam War, barrio violence, and poverty.
Case Of The Pen Gone Missing: A Mickey Rangel Mystery / El Caso De La Pluma Perdida: Coleccion Mickey Rangel, Detective Privado
When Toots Rodriguez approaches Mickey on the playground, he knows something is up. Toots, the prettiest girl in the fifth grade, never talks to Mickey, not even when they’re assigned to work together on a class project. But Toots has come to Mickey because she’s in trouble, and he’s a detective. The real deal. He has a badge and a certificate after completing an online course two years ago. ”You have to believe me, Mickey. I didn’t take that pen. I didn’t.” When Toots shines her big green eyes on him and insists repeatedly that she’s innocent, Mickey’s intuition tells him to run fast in the opposite direction. But he’s a sucker for a pretty girl, so he takes on the case of the missing pen. Rumor has it that Toots stole Eddy’s pen. It’s not just any old pen; it’s his dad’s pen. It has the White House logo on it. Eddy’s father, a senator from South Texas, got the pen from the President of the United States when he visited the White House last year. As Mickey begins his investigation, though, all the clues point to Toots and her newly ex-boyfriend as the primary suspects. The first book in The Mickey Rangel Mystery series for intermediate readers, author and educator Rene Saldana, Jr. has crafted another appealing book for kids, and his wise-cracking, smart protagonist will appeal to even the most reluctant readers.
Honey Blonde Chica
Evie Gomez is one chill chica.She and her best friend, Raquel, hang with the Flojos, a kick-back crew named for their designer flip-flops. And their habit of doing absolutely nothing.But the return of long-lost amiga mejor Dee Dee wrecks Evie and Raquel’s Flojo flow. A few years in Mexico City have transformed their shy, skinny, brunette Dee Dee into a Sangro nightmare. Dee Dee has reinvented herself as “Dela,” complete with tight designer threads, freaky blue contacts, and that signature blond hair.When Raquel wants precisely nada to do with the new Dela, Evie finds herself caught between two very different friends. At heart, is Evie a Cali-casual Flojo chick, or a sexy Sangro diva?How’s a chica to choose?