How on earth did it take me so long to read anything by Matt de la Pena? (Apologies to the author for my inability to get my blogging software to get his name right.) Having heard him speak at the SCBWI conference in L.A. last year, I added him to my "must read" list but only just picked up Mexican Whiteboy last night. I read it on a plane home from a conference - cover to cover in one sitting. I was glad I was sitting in a window seat toward the back of the plane so I had time to finish it before I had to deplane.
This is the best "building of a relationship and overcoming differences" story I've ever read. It deals with a half-white, half-Mexican boy (Danny) spending the summer at his missing dad's relatives' house and forging an unlikely friendship with a half-Mexican, half-African American boy (Uno) who has his own father/family issues to confront.
The boys deal with identity issues, family, girls, "otherness" and, of course ... baseball. The dialogue is genuine and authentic mixing various street dialects, notably what one might call "Spanglish". It took a few pages for me to orient my ear to the dialogue, but after that it was easy going. While there's lots of imagery and real poetry in the story which is beautiful, it's also fast paced and tugs at the heartstrings while leaving the reader with a sense of optimism and hope at the end.
I'm kicking myself for taking so long to get to this author's work and am definitely going to read more (and more quickly) in the future.
This is the best "building of a relationship and overcoming differences" story I've ever read. It deals with a half-white, half-Mexican boy (Danny) spending the summer at his missing dad's relatives' house and forging an unlikely friendship with a half-Mexican, half-African American boy (Uno) who has his own father/family issues to confront.
The boys deal with identity issues, family, girls, "otherness" and, of course ... baseball. The dialogue is genuine and authentic mixing various street dialects, notably what one might call "Spanglish". It took a few pages for me to orient my ear to the dialogue, but after that it was easy going. While there's lots of imagery and real poetry in the story which is beautiful, it's also fast paced and tugs at the heartstrings while leaving the reader with a sense of optimism and hope at the end.
I'm kicking myself for taking so long to get to this author's work and am definitely going to read more (and more quickly) in the future.
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