Olga Dies Dreaming by Xchoitl Gonzales. Flatiron Books, 2022, 384 Pages.

Burn Baby Burn by Meg Medina. Candlewick, 2016. 356 pages.

Summer of 1977, NYC, hot and gritty. Son of Sam is on the loose and Nora is poor and street smart and seventeen. I love the tension of the hot-son of sam- background and I love Meg Medina's female characters. The men do not measure up though. Still, a very strong enjoyable read. Quick one too.

Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass by Meg Medina. Candlewick Press, 2013., 260 pages.

Piddi Sanchez is in a new school when one day, in a hall crowded and noisy between classes, a girl she thinks is named Vanesa jumps in front of her and says "Yaqui Delgado wants to kick your ass". Then Vanesa disappears into the crowd before Piddi can even ask "Who is Yaqui Delgado?".
Piddi needs to learn how to navigate this-- as well as other life situations-- the best friend she left behind seems to be moving on; her mother works all the time and Piddi cannot talk to her anymore; Hair salon chisme leads to a terrible revelation about the father she never met-- and more. A quick read sprinkled with spanish slang terms that do not always work in english (caramel) I loved this coming of age story that stays real about bullying and the behavior of adults, the predicaments kids find themselves in and the limits and possibilities of school anti bullying and discipline policies. Loved it.

How Tia Lola Learned to Teach by Julia Alvarez. Yearling Books, 2011, 135 pages

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. Vintage Contemporaries, 1991. 110 pages.

Originally published in 1984, The House on Mango Street, a YA coming of age classic, reads and feels as fresh as if it were written today. Cisneros reveals Esperanza's world through a series of short, vingettes that read like poetry-- sparse and powerful  with well chosen words. We experience life on Mango Street-- we see  and smell  and feel ---as if we lived there with Esperanza, and Marin and Nenny.  This book lives up to its well deserved reputation.

Maximilian: The mystery of the guardian angel by Xavier Garza. Cinco Punto Press, El Paso, TX, 2011. 207 pages

Carmen: an urban adaptation of the opera by Walter Dean Myers. Egmont, NY, 2011. 140 pages

I love the opera Carmen and I love Walter Dean Myers and I wanted to love this but I could not. It is set up exactly as a play-- the settings, the stage instructions, the music. Set in El Barrio (Spanish Harlem) the characters are modern reincarnations of the original novela, pre-Bizet, infact-- modeled after West Side Story. Factory workers, cops instead of soldiers, a Hip Hop Star instead of a Toreador, but the story remains basically the same. I still love the idea, but i thought the dialog was stilted and unnatural ("We'll do the caper..."?) and many of the characters and settings were dangerously close to stereotyping. Please-- i still love Walter Dean Myers and he added an author's note explaining why he wanted to work with Carmen, he spoke about the very public music in the Harlem of his youth, about the stereotyping he had encountered in different versions of the novella-- in fact i enjoyed the author's note very much-- much more than the novela.
Unfortunately, I can see adults liking this a lot, but i do not see it speaking to kids-- only to an adult idea of what speaks to kids. Myers does not usually write about Latinos, and Carmen, unfortunately, is not what he does best. Sorry. it was very well reviewed but I was so disappointed.