THE LATINA BOOK CLUB

I open the book. Word-blindness. The pages are white! Is this really a blank diary, or just an ordinary schoolbook filled with frog-slippery tricky letters that know how to leap and escape? --Fefa THE WILD BOOK By Margarita Engle HMH Books for Young Readers, 2014 BEAUTIFUL. HEARTFELT. INSPIRING. A mother’s love is a powerful thing, and Fefa’s mother refuses the edict doctors proclaim. Dyslexia will not cripple her child, and so she teaches Fefa to see the world in a different light. SUMMARY:   But her mother has an idea. She gives Fefa a blank book filled with clean white pages. "Think of it as a garden," she says. Soon Fefa starts to sprinkle words across the pages of her wild book. She lets her words sprout like seedlings, shaky at first, then growing stronger and surer with each new day. And when her family is threatened, it is what Fefa has learned from her wild book that saves them. ABOUT THE AUTHOR:    M...

   The Latina Book Club’s PICK FIVE for this week are all middle grade books  that spark our fancy and imagination. Happy Reading. And as always, #ReadLatinoLit. MY YEAR IN THE MIDDLE By Lila Quintero Weaver Candlewick Press Sixth-grader Lu Olivera just wants to keep her head down and get along with everyone in her class. But Lu can’t stay neutral about the racial divide at school. Will she find the gumption to stand up for what’s right and to choose friends who do the same?   This story is based on the author’s childhood.     WHAT LANE? By Torrey Maldonado Nancy Paulsen Books As a mixed kid, Steven feels like he's living in two worlds with different rules--and he's been noticing that strangers treat him differently than his white friends. Hold on tight as Stephen swerves in and out of lanes to find out which are his--and who should be with him . THE DREAM WEAVER  By Reina Luz Alegre  S...

    He’d give anything to be out there playing instead of standing here watching. Trying to maintain this smile out of respect. He digs into his wrists some more with his nails. Breaks previously broken skin and pulls away. A smear of blood he wipes away with his other hand, rubs off across his dark jeans. Back home his mom is always on him to stop digging, but that only makes him want to dig more.   --Danny Powerful. Passionate. Heartbreaking. MEXICAN WHITE BOY by Matt de la Peňa   (Delacorte Press, 2008) is a story of friendship, revelations, acceptance, and finding courage and strength in the face of adversity. Danny’s mother is more worried about her new husband than her son. Danny happily goes to visit his father’s family for the summer, planning to run off to Mexico and find his dad and stay with him. But there are secrets that he is not prepared for, and that hurt more than anything. Danny is lost in a dark place, until a true friendship gi...

The Latina Book Club ’s PICK FIVE for this week are all young adult novels  about family, friendship, romance, and being true to yourself no matter what.    Happy Reading. And as always, #ReadLatinoLit. RUNNING By Natalia Sylvester Clarion Books When fifteen-year-old Cuban American Mariana Ruiz’s father runs for president, Mari starts to see him with new eyes. A novel about waking up and standing up, and what happens when you stop seeing your dad as your hero—while the whole country is watching. BECAUSE OF THE SUN By Jenny Torres Sanchez Delacorte Press From the backyards of suburban Florida to the parched desert of New Mexico,  Because of the Sun  explores the complexity of family, the saving grace of friendship, and the healing that can begin when the truth is brought to light. THE LIBRARY OF LOST THINGS By Laura Taylor Namey Inkyard Press From the moment she first learned to read, liter...

Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz is incontestably Latin America's foremost beloved poet.  THE COLLECTED POEMS OF OCTAVIO PAZ (New Directions) is a landmark bilingual gathering of all the poetry he has published in book form since 1952, the year of his premier long poem,  Sunstone  ( Piedra de Sol )―here translated anew by Eliot Weinberger―made its appearance.  Here’s an excerpt: a sudden presence like a burst of song, like the wind singing in a burning building, a glance that holds the world and all its seas and mountains dangling in the air, body of light filtered through an agate, thighs of light, belly of light, the bays, the solar rock, cloud-colored body, color of a brisk and leaping day, the hour sparkles and has a body, the world is visible through your body, transparent through your transparency. -- Sunstone , Octavio Paz ABOUT THE AUTHOR:    Octavio Paz  (1914-1998) was born in Mexico City...

To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes;  to hear it is to see it with our ears.  –poet Octavio Paz The Latina Book Club is highlighting five wonderful books of poetry this week. We’ve been reading a lot of poetry lately. No reason.   We enjoy it and find that it speaks to the soul.   Poetry makes us cry, laugh, moan, roar.   Poetry is not dead.   It lives within the words we read, the music we hear, and the world we see around us.   Let us know the Latinx poets you enjoy.   HERMOSA   By Yesika Salgado   Not A Cult      A journey of firsts, of mistakes, of celebrations, of the love, the crush, the disaster, the rebuilding, and the never-ending cycle of growth. BE RECORDER: POEMS By Carmen Gimènez Smith Graywolf Press   A dream of rebellion―against compromise, against inertia, against self-delusion, and against the ways the media dream up our co...

Delacorte Press, 1991 But just then, for that fraction of time, it seems as though all things are possible. You can look across the limitations of your own life, and see that they are really nothing. In that moment when time stops, it is as though you know you could undertake any venture, complete it and come back to yourself, to find the world unchanged, and everything just as you left it a moment before. And it's as though knowing that everything is possible, suddenly nothing is necessary.   Before there was GAME OF THRONES, there was OUTLANDER.   A time travel romance with an epic love triangle, spellbinding passion, rich history, exhilarating adventures and extraordinary characters.   Eight books and several novellas later, the OUTLANDER series is a major hit on paper and on screen.   In fact, PBS’ The Great American Read declared it one of the Top Ten Best-Loved Novels in America.   And, Starz is currently playing Season 5.  ...

The Latina Book Club  wishes author  Chantel Acevedo  a Happy Book Birthday.   T he Muse Squad was released on July 7.  It’s Chantel's first middle grade book, and the first in a fantasy duology with a Cuban American heroine and diverse friends. MUSE SQUAD is an ode to girl power. Memorable. Magical. Moving.  Think Percy Jackson and the Olympians series and Disney’s  Hercules , and you’ll get the idea behind Chantel Acevedo’s MUSE SQUAD.  The heroine is 11-year old Callie, who turns out to be a Greek muse with lots of raw power. Now, Callie and the others in the Muse Squad must learn to use their power responsibly.     SUMMARY:   Callie Martinez-Silva didn’t mean to turn her best friend into a pop star. But when a simple pep talk leads to miraculous results, Callie learns she’s the newest muse of epic poetry, one of the nine Muses of Greek mythology tasked with protecting humanity’s fate in se...