  | Full Text Reviews: School Library Journal - 07/01/2015 Gr 4–7—Jacinta may not know much about the world outside the barrio, but she knows how to grab a chance with both hands and make it work for her. When a well-known news anchorwoman comes to report on her youth center, Jacinta uses a combination of luck, cunning, and raw emotion to guilt "Miss" into becoming her amiga and mentor. As she and and Miss get closer and come to know each other's families over the next year, they frustrate and learn from one another, and ultimately precipitate a crisis in Jacinta's already fraught life. Miss is also far from perfect, and she struggles openly with professional, personal, and financial issues, but Jacinta's dangers tend to be more immediate—her parents are both undocumented, and her family faces eviction, deportation, and the violence and uncertainty of re-entry. The story is narrated from Jacinta's point of view after the fact, with both additional exposition and regretful foreshadowing. This allows the author a greater range of perspective, but makes Jacinta's experiences less immediate, more told than shown. The plotting is rough and choppy but the characters burn through the page. Jacinta with her fierce neediness, Miss with her irritability, fear, condescension/confusion, and basic decency. It's as pleasurable to watch these characters take one another by surprise as it is horribly anxiety-producing to see them hurt, stumble, insult, and misunderstand nearly every situation requiring contextual awareness. Rose doesn't sugarcoat the hypocrisies and tough realities of the relationship, and of the very real reasons that they mistrust one another. Nearly everyone in the book makes some some pretty serious and unforgivable mistakes, but as flawed humans they are allowed to wear their flaws, to make mature decisions and stupid childish ones. Rather than writing an "issue book," Rose presents characters in crisis, whose stories are personal, rather than broadly representative, and the book is better for it. Ultimately, this is a story about code switching, and about the different skill sets and assumptions required for complex cross-cultural and cross-class situations. VERDICT An interesting first novel that treats its complex characters with unusual dignity.—Katya Schapiro, Brooklyn Public Library - Copyright 2015 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission. Booklist - 09/01/2015 After a news reporter broadcasts a story from her neighborhood youth center, 12-year-old Jacinta asks the reporter to be her amiga (mentor). “Miss,” as Jacinta respectfully calls her, agrees, but Jacinta is taken off guard when Miss introduces her to the bewildering world outside her barrio. At first, it’s more frightening than hiding the fact that her father is an undocumented immigrant. All the while, Miss speaks with a vocabulary and confidence that confounds Jacinta until she realizes these are tools to help her achieve things she never dared dream of before. When her family is suddenly ripped apart, Jacinta must use what she learned from Miss and summon the strength to reunite her family. This smart debut is a poignant exploration of cultural variations and family ties through the eyes of a lovable and funny narrator. Timely in its look at the plight of undocumented immigrants and their American-born children, it is a story of empowerment against the shadows of life in the barrio. - Copyright 2015 Booklist. Loading...
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