About this item
Highlights
- Dad believed people were like money.
- Pura Belpre Award (Author) 1998 1st Winner
- 240 Pages
- Young Adult Fiction, Classics
Description
About the Book
Winner of the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, "Parrot in the Oven, " tells the story of a Mexican-American boy's coming of age in the face of poverty, abuse, and cultural discrimination. "A rare and consummately believable portrait of barrio life."--"Publisher's Weekly."Book Synopsis
Dad believed people were like money. You could be a thousand-dollar person or a hundred-dollar person -- even a ten-, five-, or one-dollar person. Below that, everybody was just nickels and dimes. To my dad, we were pennies.
Fourteen-year-old Manny Hernandez wants to be more than just a penny. He wants to be a vato firme, the kind of guy people respect. But that′s not easy when your father is abusive, your brother can′t hold a job, and your mother scrubs the house as if she can wash her troubles away.
In Manny′s neighborhood, the way to get respect is to be in a gang. But Manny′s not sure that joining a gang is the solution. Because, after all, it′s his life -- and he wants to be the one to decide what happens to it.
Review Quotes
"A brilliant, witty memoir of a Mexican-American adolescence."-- "U.S. News & Report""A rare and consummately believable portrait of barrio life."-- "Publishers Weekly" (Starred review)