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.

After saving a drowning puppy while dealing with a huge crush on his classmate Sierra, thirteen-year-old Jordan Mendoza nurses the abandoned puppy back to health and wonders who threw her into the canal and if there are more puppies needing rescue.

Poet Gary Soto captures the voices of young people as they venture toward their first kiss, brood over bruised hearts, and feel the thrill of first love.

At age thirteen, best friends Ronnie and Joey suddenly feel like chimps--long armed, big eared, and gangly--and when the coach humiliates Joey in front of a girl, he climbs up a tree and refuses to come down.

You can pray and sometimes God listens, says 19-year-old Eddie. "Other times he's far away in India or Africa or maybe close to home in Fresno, his body sprawled on the floor, glass all around because of a drive-by." All Eddie wants is to find a way out of the dangerous life he's living, where his friends are lost in a world of drugs and violence. Even his aunt wants to give him a gun so he can avenge the death of her son. But no matter how hard he...

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

After their photograph of a robbery is published in the newspaper, Hector and Mando find themselves pursued by two goofy thieves.

Hector and his best friend Mondo enjoy many exciting adventures when they take a six-day bike trip from their East Los Angeles neighborhood to the Santa Monica beach during summer vacation.

After being teased about his brand new loafers, Angel puts them away for so long he grows out of them.

Chato and Novio win a cruise but are disappointed to find that everyone else on board is a dog, and things go from bad to worse when the dogs party themselves sick and it is up to the cats to find help.