Pura Belpré honoree Delacre’s chronicles—each different from the next—offer moving snapshots of family heartbreak,...
Based on actual accounts, this dynamic short story collection focuses on and delves into the nuances of the lives of young Latinos and Latinas in the United States.
In the opening story, “The Attack,” readers are exposed to a medical emergency gone wrong when police racially profile a young Mexican-American man undergoing an epileptic seizure with a knife in hand. The story lands like a gut punch, and the following 11 also leave impressions and invite considerable scrutiny. Another touching narrative, titled “Burrito Man,” depicts the sudden death of a Salvadoran father saving for his daughter’s college tuition as an unassuming food vendor in D.C. Inspired by true stories and woven with cultural details and Spanish dialects appropriate to different Latin American countries, the collection is penetrating: Latin American families are divided by deportation; illness and poverty are constant struggles; characters feel guilt, shame, and an inescapable sense of being unwelcome in the U.S. Tech-industry gentrifiers and neighborhood kids clash over a San Francisco soccer field; a privileged, fifth-generation middle-class Tejano harbors palpable prejudices and misconceptions about unaccompanied children crossing the border. Common Spanish sayings—refranes—and attractive freehand pencil sketches of the protagonists usher in each story, both serving as integral elements in this solidly packaged collection.
Pura Belpré honoree Delacre’s chronicles—each different from the next—offer moving snapshots of family heartbreak, disadvantage, dysfunctionality, heartbreak, privilege, and joy. (glossary, translations, notes) (Short stories. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-239214-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often...
A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.
Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Zuckerman. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. "Some Pig" comes first. Then "Terrific"—then "Radiant". The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is "Humble". And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring.
The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1952
ISBN: 978-0-06-026385-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1952
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
During a school year in which a gifted teacher who emphasizes personal responsibility among his fifth graders ends up in a coma from a thrown snowball, his students come to terms with their own issues and learn to be forgiving. Told in short chapters organized month-by-month in the voices of seven students, often describing the same incident from different viewpoints, this weaves together a variety of not-uncommon classroom characters and situations: the new kid, the trickster, the social bully, the super-bright and the disaffected; family clashes, divorce and death; an unwed mother whose long-ago actions haven't been forgotten in the small-town setting; class and experiential differences. Mr. Terupt engineers regular visits to the school’s special-needs classroom, changing some lives on both sides. A "Dollar Word" activity so appeals to Luke that he sprinkles them throughout his narrative all year. Danielle includes her regular prayers, and Anna never stops her hopeful matchmaking. No one is perfect in this feel-good story, but everyone benefits, including sentimentally inclined readers. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-73882-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
