This modern classic celebrates the tradition of tamales and family bonding at Christmas.Christmas Eve started out so perfectly for Maria. Snow had fallen and the streets glittered. Maria's favorite cousins were coming over and she got to help make the tamales for Christmas dinner. It was almost too good to be true when her mother left the kitchen for a moment and Maria got to try on her beautiful diamond ring . . .This is the story of a treasure thought to ...

Americas Award for Children's and Young Adult LiteratureEddie's father, two uncles, and best friend are all dead, and it's a struggle for him not to end up the same way. Violence makes Fresno wallow in tears, as if a huge onion were buried beneath the city. Making an effort to walk a straight line despite constant temptations and frustrations, Eddie searches for answers—and discovers that his closest friends may actually be his worst enemies.Includes a ...

A sweetly humorous middle grade novel packed with action, basketball, and a dash of magical realism about friendship and family, first crushes, and belonging, from acclaimed author Gary Soto.Thirteen-year-old Jordan Mendoza has a huge crush on his classmate, Sierra, but he’s never going to win her affections if he stays a C student and keeps embarrassing himself on the basketball court. And it doesn’t help that his best friend, Antonio, likes to tease him about it ...

A sweetly humorous middle grade novel packed with action, basketball, and a dash of magical realism about friendship and family, first crushes, and belonging, from acclaimed author Gary Soto.Thirteen-year-old Jordan Mendoza has a huge crush on his classmate, Sierra, but he’s never going to win her affections if he stays a C student and keeps embarrassing himself on the basketball court. And it doesn’t help that his best friend, Antonio, likes to tease him about it ...

What do Gaby Lopez, Michael Robles, and Cynthia Rodriguez have in common? These three kids join other teens and tweens in Gary Soto's new short story collection, in which the hard-knock facts of growing up are captured with humor and poignance.Filled with annoying siblings, difficult parents, and first loves, these stories are a masterful reminder of why adolescence is one of the most frustrating and fascinating times of life.These ten slice-of-life stories capture the mome...

Expanded from the award-winning Chicano poet's 1977 original, this poetry collection explores the hardships and joys of migrant workers in California.A timely new edition of a pioneering work in Latino literature, National Book Award–nominee Gary Soto's first collection (originally published in 1977) draws on California's fertile San Joaquin Valley, the people, the place, and the hard agricultural work done there by immigrants. In these poems, joy and anger, violenc...

Being thirteen is happy, sad, humiliating, surprising, wonderful, awful, exciting, boring -- in other words, full of ups and downs. The thirteen-year-olds in Gary Soto's thirteen stories experience all this and more. In one story, a girl's world is turned upside down when she visits a college campus where she expects to find a rarified atmosphere of intellectual pursuit, only to meet a tour guide who is tattooed, overly pierced, hungover, and not at all focused on academics. In another, tw...

Chato can't believe his luck. Not only is he the coolest low-riding cat in East L.A., but his brand-new neighbors are the plumpest, juciest, tastiest-looking family of mice to move into the barrio in a long time. So Chato and his best friend, Novio Boy, get out the pots and pans, the tortillas and the beans--everything you'd need for a welcoming feast, except for the main dish, and the guests of honor. Of course, in Chato's mind they are one and the same thing.But the mice are brin...

For fans of the Legendary Alston Boys, an uproarious contemporary adventure story with a dash of fantasy about two friends who start a non-singing duo, go viral, and become unlikely international rock stars, bringing mindfulness to the middle school masses.At Visalia Middle School, nothing exciting ever happens. For Jason and Sean, eating candy at recess and dreaming of a future filled with fame and fortune is usually the highlight of their day. But when Sean stumb...

This sequel to Chato's Kitchen is truly a cause for celebration!Chato-the coolest cat in the barrio-loves to party. So when he learns that Novio Boy has never had a birthday party, Chato decides to throw him a surprise pachanga. He gets right to work-inviting everyone in the neighborhood, cooking up a feast, arranging for music and a pinata, and even ordering a special cake. Chato's sure that he's thought of everything. But when it comes time for the party, he realizes that he forg...

Adept at portraying Latino teenage culture, author Gary Soto has won many honors, including an ALA Best Book Award for his young adult novels. After an East Fresno student is murdered, his mind leaves his body. Now he must get used to being an invisible spirit-one who watches his friends and family deal with his death.

The acclaimed young adult biography of the UFW's first female organizer.This inspiring story of Jessie De La Cruz, the United Farmer Workers, and la Causa is told as only Gary Soto—novelist, essayist, poet, and himself a field laborer during his teens—can tell it, with respect, empathy, and deep compassion for the working poor.A field worker from the age of five, Jessie knew poverty, harsh working conditions, and the exploitation of Mexicans and all poor pe...