Author :
Victor Martinez, Illustrator : Steve Scott, Translator : Amalia Bermejo
5th Grade and up
El loro en el horno
Parrot in the Oven
El
loro en el horno, Softcover, Spanish, Book, Victor Martinez, Steve Scott, Amalia Bermejo,
5th Grade and up,
9788427932388, $14.50
Parrot in the Oven,
Softcover, English, Book, Victor Martinez, Steve Scott, 5th Grade and up,
9780064471862, $5.99
$333.83 for the Story Collection Pura Belpre Spanish Set, Including 20%-Off, Free Shipping, and No Sales Tax : 2 Hardcover Spanish Book, 8 Hardcover Bilingual Book, 19 Softcover Spanish Books, and 12 Softcover Bilingual Books
$448.07 for the Story Collection Pura Belpre English Set, Including 20%-Off, Free Shipping, and No Sales Tax : 24 Hardcover English Books and 18 Softcover English Books
Pura Belpre Award
Winning Book in 1998 for Narrative
1996 Americas Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature
1997 Books for the Teen Age (NY Public Library)
1996 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature
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 was the trouble 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. Winner of the 1996 National Book Award for Young People's Literature, Parrot in the Oven: mi vida is a fresh, original, and powerfully written account of one boy's coming-of-age in a difficult time. For Manuel Hernandez, the year leading up to his test of courage, his initiation into a gang, is a time filled with the pain and tension, awkwardness and excitement of growing up in a mixed-up, crazy world. Manny’s dad is always calling him el perico, or parrot. It’s from a Mexican saying about a parrot that complains how hot it is in the shade while all along he’s sitting inside the oven and doesn’t know it. But Manny wants to be smarter than the parrot in the oven—he wants to find out what it means to be a vato firme, a guy to respect. From an exciting new voice in Chicano literature, this is a beautifully written, vivid portrait of one Mexican-American boy’s life.
It's no wonder
that Parrot in the Oven won the 1996 National Book Award for Young
People's Fiction. Victor Martinez's lush, evocative prose leaps from the page,
grabbing the reader by the throat right from the start. Not only do we witness
Manuel Hernandez's coming of age, we feel every juicy moment of it: his ache
for something just out of reach, the confusion of seeing his family with new
eyes, the tickle and flood of awakening passion. It's difficult to portray
transformation from the inside, but Martinez does so with grace and power. --This
text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Publishers Weekly
: In his debut novel, set in a dusty California town, Martinez employs a
series of compelling, frequently troubling vignettes to illuminate a Mexican
American boy's coming of age. It's not easy for Manuel Hernandez to discover
his place in the world, especially when he is constantly bombarded with the
hardships of his poor and woefully dysfunctional family. Their tiny sheetrock
house in the projects is the scene of angry arguments-even of threats at rifle
point. Manny steps onto a battlefield at every turn, whether he is collecting
his alcoholic and violent father from the local pool hall, withstanding the
ethnic slurs of white school mates, or seeking initiation into a neighborhood
gang. But as the months pass and some of his wounds heal, Manny slowly begins
to understand the sense of self that he can derive from his role within this
difficult household. The tense prose and often biting dialogue bring into
razor-sharp focus the frustration and bitterness of a struggling family; at
the same time, Manny's first-person narrative is tinged with compassion and,
indeed, love for the unstable people around him. Martinez's honest voice, and
descriptions sprinkled with elegant imagery, offer a rare and consummately
believable portrait of barrio life. Ages 12-up.
School Library Journal : Grade 8-10-This contemporary novel, lyrically related in a series of vignettes, tells the story of a Mexican-American family's struggle to maintain its integrity in the face of poverty, discrimination, and cultural alienation. Manuel (Manny) Hernandez, second son in a family of four children, introduces readers to his unemployed father and strong but long-suffering mother, who bristles against her husband's ne'er-do-well tendencies while respecting his status as head of the household, as their culture dictates. Strong willed enough to send him to prison when he threatens her with a rifle, she cleans the house and welcomes him home when he is released, much to the frustration of her children. Intense emotions and bursts of violence flare up in this story, tempered by true love and family ties. Manny's sister Magda suffers a miscarriage as well as the recriminations of a Mexican hospital receptionist. Back at home in a moment of unanticipated tenderness, Manny's father gently cares for his daughter. Throughout, the powerful thread of this story is Manny's search for acceptance, laced with the adolescent angst that always accompanies such a quest. He maintains his personal integrity despite social humiliations and skirmishes with the law. Martinez writes with clear insight into the Chicano culture. His narrative is poetic, at times almost delicate, in depicting the joys, sorrows, and traumas of the Hernandez family. This novel will appeal to YAs in general and especially to Mexican-American readers.
Booklist : Gr. 7-10. For Mexican American teen Manuel, the main challenge in life, whether he always realizes it or not, is to find a reason to survive amid the negativity and emptiness that pervade his growing up in a city project. His father, unemployed and often drunk, is a source of tension for the whole family, especially Manuel's mother, whose determination to keep them all together is at times superhuman. The novel, written in a fluid, poetic language, resembles a series of vignettes more than one connected story; and this structure not only leaves the character development of Manuel and his family uneven but also generates a disjointedness that is occasionally confusing. There is also a general lack of basic information, such as the exact setting of the story and the ages of Manuel and his siblings, that may make the characters and their environment difficult for readers to visualize. However, the stories themselves, from Manuel's sister's miscarriage to his initiation into a gang to his grandmother's death, are not easily forgotten, and the book is worth purchasing for its authentic portrayal of a Hispanic teen's experiences. Laura Tillotson --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Story
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