A poignant, humorous collection by acclaimed poet Gary SotoThe fleeting emotions of teenagers, as changeable as the weather, ring true in these emotionally resonant poems. Told from the point of view of both boys and girls, narrators of various ethnicities fall in love for the first time, pine ov...
Gary Soto writes that when he was five "what I knew best was at ground level." In this lively collection of short essays, Soto takes his reader to a ground-level perspective, resreating in vivid detail the sights, sounds, smells, and textures he knew growing up in his Fresno, California, neighbor...
When i had read this book i thought it was a lovely book to read over and over. One of the reasons is that it relates to actual teenagers that go out secretly. When they do that they worry parents and gets them into trouble. Because in the book Marissa has her mother find her in the hospital with...
I recently read LIiving up the street by Gary Soto. This story is an autobiography about Gary Soto life, who is a Mexican-American living in Fresno, California. In the book, Soto writes about his childhood in the 1950s and 1960s,his working class neighborhood his school adventures, how he gets i...
With real wit and heart, Gary Soto takes readers into the lives of young people in ten funny, heartbreaking tales. Meet Carolina, who writes to Miss Manners for help not just with etiquette but with bigger messes in her life; Javier, who knows the stories his friend Veronica tells him are lies...
Companion book to Pool Party. While helping his father and grandfather work as gardeners in Fresno, California, ten-year-old Rudy sees some differences between his Mexican-American family and the wealthy families that live nearby.
Summary: In the first two pages of this novel, the main character is murdered at a nightclub; the rest of the novel chronicles his journey as a ghost through the first few days following his death. Chuy learns what it means to be dead (and to have lived) as he "visits" his friends and family an...
Miata has left the beautiful folklórico skirt her mother wore in Mexico on the bus. She was going to wear the skirt on Sunday when her dance group performed folklórico. Can Miata and her friend Ana rescue the precious skirt in time?
On his thirteenth birthday, Ronnie woke up feeling like a chimp--all long armed, big eared, and gangly. He's been muddling through each gawky day since. Now his best friend, Joey, has turned thirteen, too--and after Joey humiliates himself in front of a cute girl, he climbs a tree and refuses to ...
he must have had help from others. The master couldn’t have written all those plays and sonnets, one brilliant work after another, with such an inexhaustible display of genius and commercial sense. I dispute this rumor. I picture — through my own sepia lens — Shakespeare straining to write in a t...
Uncle Andy had given her a set of used clubs (minus the putter) with the promise to take her to the golf course when she got good. And in order to get good, she figured, she had to practice. She first practiced in her backyard, but her cat, Samba, kept chasing the golf ball. Then she practiced in...
He ran his hand over His face, then looked at His fingernails—spaghetti sauce. “Let me tell you about girls,” Dad began, and then said, “Well, they're usually shorter Than us guys.” I was thinking Of Sarah from biology, How she came up To my shoulder, And the scalpel in her hand— The ...
They echoed like voices coming down a concrete hallway at a baseball stadium, at a hospital, or the back entrance of a hotel, where bundled trash is tossed into a Dumpster. You open the door, hear freeway noises, and toss. They were discussing him. He could make out his name, but they might as we...
A dog's shadow crawled away, whimpering. Snow cones leaked like faucets. The color green deserted lawns, and roses shed withered petals to reveal their thorns. No breeze stirred the stiff laundry on clotheslines. On that afternoon, the street was deserted, except for Gabe Mendoza as he trudged to...