THE LATINA BOOK CLUB

   Vibrant. Sexy. Fun.      Alexis Daria reminds us that telenovelas are pleasurable and sexy.   This is NOT your Abuela’s telenovela.    YOU HAD ME A HOLA is an amusing romp with memorable characters set in the Big Apple, in the middle of soap opera central.   (Published by HarperCollins.) BOOK SUMMARY:   Leading Ladies do not end up on tabloid covers.  After a messy public breakup, soap opera darling Jasmine Lin Rodriguez finds her face splashed across the tabloids. When she returns to her hometown of New York City to film the starring role in a bilingual romantic comedy for the number one streaming service in the country, Jasmine figures her new “Leading Lady Plan” should be easy enough to follow—until a casting shake-up pairs her with telenovela hunk Ashton Suárez.  Leading Ladies don’t need a man to be happy .  After his last telenovela character was killed off, Ashton is worri...

Gorgeous. Stunning. A true celebration of Frida Kahlo. Congratulations to Kathy Cano-Murillo – aka the Crafty Chica – who has outdone herself with her 10 th book, FOREVER FRIDA , published by Adams Media and released on Frida Kahlo’s birthday July 9 th . BOOK SUMMARY:   With her colorful style, dramatic self-portraits, hardscrabble backstory, and verve for life, Frida Kahlo remains a modern icon, captivating and inspiring artists, feminists, and art lovers more than sixty years after her death. FOREVER FRIDA celebrates all things Frida, so you can enjoy her art, her words, her style, and her badass attitude every day.   F rom the self-portraits, to the flower crown, to her iconic eyebrows—this is a fun and commemorative book.   “There are no chapters”, says Kathy about the book on her blog post. “The book is very organic and loose. You can open it up to any page and find a standalone entry about Frida. Whether its a quote or a piece of trivia...

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...