Gary Soto

Maria tries on her mother's wedding ring while helping make tamales for a Christmas family get-together. Panic ensues when, hours later, she realizes the ring is missing.

Fourteen-year-old Lincoln Mendoza, an aspiring basketball player, must come to terms with his divided loyalties when he moves from the Hispanic inner city to a white suburban neighborhood.

When nineteen-year-old Eddie drops out of college, he struggles to find a place for himself as a Mexican American living in a violence-infested neighborhood of Fresno, California. A junior college dropout, 19-year-old Eddie is trying to support himself in this story set in the barrio of Fresno, California. Annotation. For Eddie there isn't much to do in his rundown neighborhood but eat, sleep, watch out for drive-bys, and just try to get through each...

Two Mexican American brothers hope that junior college will help them escape their heritage of tedious physical labor.

When Hector's mother suggests that he and his amigo Mando get out of East L.A. for the weekend and see some of the world, he's thinking Paris. So he's a little disappointed when they end up in Fresno, sleeping on a lumpy couch in his Uncle Julio's messy apartment. Hector figures it's going to be one boring weekend. he couldn't be more wrong. between flying in a rickety old plane, spotting an armored car heist, and warding off the bambling theives...

A senior at East Fresno High School lives on as a ghost after his brutal murder in the restroom of a club where he had gone to dance.

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...

The author's twenty-one poems are about the themes of life and each is preceded by a personal anecdote.

In order to look more like his father, Ricky borrows a mustache from a school costume, but when he loses it on the way home, his father comes up with a replacement.

Children and teens from all walks of life deal with the dramas of growing up.