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 ...

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 ...

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 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 over crushes, and brood over broken hearts. Tender, lighthearted, and surprising, this collection will capture teens, tweens, and anyone who remembers what it’s like to be a young person in l...

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...

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 listener to a ground-level perspective, recreating in vivid detail the sights, sounds, smells, and textures he knew growing up in his Fresno, California, neighborhood. The "things" of his boyhood tie it all together: his Buddha "splotched with gold," the taps of his shoes, and the "engines of sparks that lived beneath my soles," his worn tennies smelling ...

For fans of Gary Soto and Matt de la Peña comes a tale of a contemporary Mexican-American family with a "spunky and imaginative heroine" (Publishers Weekly).Miata Ramirez is scared and upset. The skirt she brought to show off at school is gone. She brought her forklorico skirt to show off at school and left it on the bus. It’s not just any skirt. This skirt belonged to Miata’s mother when she was a child in Mexico. On Sunday, Miata and her dance group are ...

Inspired by Shakespeare, an award-winning poet creates "smart, surprising and affecting [poetry] . . . Poems that are easy to read and difficult to forget" (David Scott Kastan, Yale University).In his engaging new collection, National Book Award finalist Gary Soto creates poems that each begin with a line from Shakespeare and then continue in Soto's fresh and accessible verse. Drawing on moments from the sonnets, Hamlet, Macbeth, A Midsummer N...

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, but can't find a way to prove it—and many other kids, each caught up in the difficulties of figuring out what it means to be alive.This unforgettable collection explores the moments t...

Inspired by Shakespeare, an award-winning poet creates "smart, surprising and affecting [poetry] . . . Poems that are easy to read and difficult to forget" (David Scott Kastan, Yale University).In his engaging new collection, National Book Award finalist Gary Soto creates poems that each begin with a line from Shakespeare and then continue in Soto's fresh and accessible verse. Drawing on moments from the sonnets, Hamlet, Macbeth, A Midsummer N...

In a prose that is so beautiful it is poetry, we see the world of growing up and going somewhere through the dust and heat of Fresno's industrial side and beyond: It is a boy's coming of age in the barrio, parochial school, attending church, public summer school, and trying to fall out of love so he can join in a Little League baseball team.His is a clarity that rings constantly through the warmth and wry reality of these sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic, always human remembran...

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...