Gary Soto

After unexpectedly falling in love with a "nerdy" boy, fourteen-year-old Yolanda works to change her life by transferring to another school, altering some of her behavior, and losing weight. Reprint.

Ninth grader Rudy has a date with eleventh grader Patricia. Now he has to come up with the money, the poise, and the conversation to carry it off. This one-act play, by turns heartwarming and heart-wrenching, follows Rudy from his desperate search for guidance through the hilarious date itself--all the way to its happy conclusion. Includes a glossary of Spanish phrases.

You'd think a knife in the ribs would be the end of things, but for Chuy, that's when his life at last gets interesting. He finally sees that people love him, faces the consequences of his actions, finds in himself compassion and bravery . . . and even stumbles on what may be true love. A funny, touching, and wholly original story by one of the finest authors writing for young readers today.

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 people. Her response was to take a stand. She joined the fledgling United Farm Workers union and, at Cesar Chavez's request, became its first woman recruiter. She also participated in strikes, helped ban the crippling short-handle hoe, became a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, testified before the Senate, and met with the Pope. Jessie's life story personalizes an historical movement and shows teens how an ordinary woman became extraordinary through her will to make change happen, not just for herself but for others."

In Gary Soto's acclaimed short story collection, the small events of daily life reveal big themes--love and friendship, youth and growing up, success and failure. Calling on his own experiences of growing up in California's Central Valley, Soto brings to life the joy and pain of young people everywhere. From crooked teeth, ponytailed girls, and embarrassing grandfathers to annoying brothers, Little League tryouts, and karate lessons, Soto writes about everyday life with humor and empathy. This moving collection--an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, Booklist Editors' Choice, and Horn Book Fanfare Selection--expresses the truths of growing up." Soto's] sensitivity to young people's concerns and his ability to portray the world as it is perceived by children is nothing less than remarkable." --Los Angeles Times Book Review Plus don't miss Gary Soto's Local News, which The Horn Book called a "first-rate collection from a perceptive and sensitive chronicler of ordinary life."

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, 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 of -summer grass, asphalt, the moist sock breathing the defeat of basesall.- The child's world is made up of small things--small, very important things.

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 stumbles across a video of a composer's deliberately silent performance piece, the boys come up with an idea for a musical act that performs non-songs. And when a video of their first concert goes viral, the duo suddenly finds their dreams of stardom coming true--despite their lack of any musical talent. Soon they're off on a globe-trotting adventure where, with the help of a cockatiel translator and an eleven-year-old talent agent, they unintentionally popularize the concept of quiet mindfulness and discover that fame can be fickle, but friendship is forever.

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 all a little too much. But when Jordan dives into the waters of a dangerous irrigation canal to save a drowning puppy, he’s suddenly got even more on his mind than kissing Sierra and making the starting team. Can he nurse the abandoned puppy back to health (and will his parents let him keep her)? Who threw her into the canal—and is it possible that there are more puppies needing rescue? And why are the cops suddenly at Jordan’s door, looking for him? There’s something for every reader in this story’s mix of humor, sports, themes of thrilling independence, subtle strands of magical realism, and timely social commentary, all held together by a sweet and satisfying emotional core.

With "soaring, matchless prose," a Pulitzer Prize winner pens a New York Times bestselling saga of the Montez O'Briens, a rambunctious family of Irish Cuban immigrants comprised of fourteen daughters-and one doggedly masculine son (Publishers Weekly). Irish American Nelson O'Brien fell passionately in love with the poetess Mariela Montez while photographing the ravages of battle in Mariela's native Cuba during the Spanish-American War. After marrying, they moved to the United States to start a new life, settling in a small Pennsylvania town where Nelson took over the Jewel Box Movie Theater. Together, they had a remarkable fifteen children: fourteen daughters and one lone son. In Oscar Hijuelos's The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien, the lives, loves, and tragedies of this sprawling Irish Cuban family unfold. Over the course of a century, each member moves in and out of each other's lives, traversing Cuba, New York, California, Alaska, and Ireland, while Margarita-the Montez O'Brien's eldest daughter-ruminates on the nature of femininity, sex, love, and earthly happiness. And as Margarita learns and grows in an overwhelmingly female environment, she can't help but contrast her experiences with those of Emilio, her intensely masculine brother, whose B-movie career in the 1950s has left him adrift and frustrated, with little hope of success. Lush and gorgeously written, The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien is a masterwork by one of America's greatest writers. Reckoning with cultural assimilation and complex family dynamics, the novel elicits tears and laughter while tenderly revealing the bounteous heart and exhilarating adventures of a warm, passionate family. Includes a Reading Group Guide.

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 all a little too much. But when Jordan dives into the waters of a dangerous irrigation canal to save a drowning puppy, he's suddenly got even more on his mind than kissing Sierra and making the starting team. Can he nurse the abandoned puppy back to health (and will his parents let him keep her)? Who threw her into the canal--and is it possible that there are more puppies needing rescue? And why are the cops suddenly at Jordan's door, looking for him? There's something for every reader in this story's mix of humor, sports, themes of thrilling independence, subtle strands of magical realism, and timely social commentary, all held together by a sweet and satisfying emotional core.

The poet writes, "The Monday when Daylight Savings, 2021, kicked in, I was left in the dark. The morning light appeared in our eastern window, then was gone by the time I finished washing the lunchtime dishes. The daytime was downright stingy in offering sunlight's optimism. A few days later, while I was on my couch with an Afghan around my legs, I sat up from my ten-minute nap, struck by a bright idea. I would write a hundred poems in a hundred days-why not? I pictured myself licking the end of a pencil to get them written in sort of a captain's log-do it longhand, I told myself. I woke before sunrise, wrote, revised, and got a poem done by lunchtime. Ambitious me. In truth this Hundred Poems Project was absurd. I knew-other poet friends knew-that more than half would end up the fireplace if not the angry teeth of our paper shredder. For me, that was a given. The act of writing mattered-keep it going, I told myself, be like a beaver and chew on a pencil, put down some lines, don't forsake this craft This private project of mine was a reminder to myself that after five decades I remain a poet, a calling few can claim. I provide forty-eight of the one hundred poems written that fall. I like to think of this period as my downtime on the couch. The writing was anything but restful."

Thirteen-year-old Gabe Mendoza is headed to the public library when he hears a voice call, ""Son."" Gabe sizes up an approaching vagrant. ""It's me, your dad.""Dad? Couldn't be. This man looks homeless—is homeless. He's hauling a suitcase with everything he possesses—nothing. To Gabe, the figure doesn't look right. He's wearing a sweatshirt on a hot summer afternoon. His neck is filthy, his teeth rotten in an unsmiling mouth. Gabe's father had abandoned him and his mother five years earlier. As the story unfolds, Gabe wrestles with confusion. Should he give his father a second chance—the father who is now destitute, possibly ill, pathetic, and an alcoholic? Life has never been easy for Gabe on the streets of Fresno. He's always escaping trouble, especially from Frankie Torres, who practices his gangbanging tactics on Gabe. The novella is quick as anger, but Gabe isn't angry. There's tenderness in his troubled heart. It is meant to be read more than once—each reading will reveal more about his mother, playground life, forgiveness, and the healing nature of dog that comes into his life.. . . The afternoon was hot, maddening hot. He stopped under a tree and spied the temperature on the corner bank building: 104. Through the wavering heat, he eyed a figure in a 49ers sweatshirt. Dang, Gabe thought. What's wrong with this guy? A sweatshirt in this heat? ""Son,"" the figure beckoned to him. Son? Gabe wondered. Was this homeless man looking for a handout? ""It's me, your dad."" The figure in dirty clothes was pulling a large suitcase on wheels. The man did his best to hoist a smile. The vagrant did resemble his dad, whom Gabe hadn't seen in four years. His dad had driven away in the family's best car, with his clothes and the household computer in the backseat. He had also loaded the car with cases of soda and bottledwater, as if he were thirsty for a life other than the one he had with them. . . "" He's homeless,"" Gabe whispered to himself. Everything he owned was stuffed in that suitcase on wheels, which he hauled like a donkey pulling a cart.

Prolific writer Gary Soto introduces the beauty of the much neglected literary form, the “proverb.” His proverbs are quirky, fun, urban and enlightening for all ages. Some people might consider the literary genre of proverbs to be stodgy or out of date, perhaps pretentious and irrelevant in our techy world. Not so with Meatballs for the People: Proverbs to Chew On. These proverbs are all original, all beckoning for verbal debate and discussion, and addictive in that it’s impossible to read just one. The nearly even hundred proverbs are discussion starters and could be a favorite work among book groups. They are enjoyable fodder not only for laughter, but for possible enlightenment. The title alone—Meatballs for the People—suggests substance and a hardy meal. You can really chew on these.

Love is a good thing—so true in The Spark and Fire of It, this classic one-act romance: two young people smitten to the point of delirium and a gruff father who will have none of it. The father sees his daughter’s suitor only as a penniless lad with nothing to offer. But the young woman’s mother sees her own husband in the young man, remembering a time when he, too, was an empty-handed suitor. Add internal complications: the young women questions her own judgment, and the young man is tempted by a hooligan called Rascal. Then there is Old Gentleman, who, like a befuddled Socrates, understands this thing called love. The romance contains poems that begin with a line of Shakespeare that Soto artfully extends into his own original poetry. The dialogue is written in the vernacular of Elizabethan times—though occasionally it falls into contemporary street slang. The code switching reminds readers that love is a human experience that makes the young go crazy no matter the century!

In this unique collection of short stories, the small events of daily life reveal big themeslove and friendship, youth and growing up, success and failure. Calling on his own experiences of growing up in California's Central Valley, poet Gary Soto brings to life the joys and pains of young people everywhere. The smart, tough, vulnerable kids in these stories are Latino, but their dreams and desires belong to all of us. En esta excepcional coleccin de cuentos, los pequeos acontecimientos de la vida diaria revalan grandes temas: el mor y la amistad, la juventud y el crecimiento, el xito y el fracaso. Partiendo su propia experiencia de haber crecido en California, el poeta chicano Gary Soto recrea las alegras y tristezas de los jvenes de todas partes. Los listos, duros y vulnerables chinos de estos cuentos son latinos, pero sus sueos y deseos son los mismos de todo el mundo.

Sudden Loss of Dignity represents where Gary Soto is in his life. He finds himself positioned in life as the older gent, or old guy. His poetry mirrors his personality, snarky and full of mockery. Soto writes about mainly aging and the loss of one’s dignity as the years pass. It’s very funny, poignant, sad, and especially true.

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.

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.