An original novella from award-winning children's author and poet Gary Soto Jason Rodriguez is a twelve-year-old who never had much luck-until he wins $3,700 in the lottery and becomes an Instant Winner! Jason can't believe he's won the lottery and decides he will use the money to get his crazy Uncle Mike out of jail. That's where the real adventure begins.

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.

Fourteen-year-old Mexican American Lincoln Mendoza spends a summer with a host family in Japan, encountering new experiences and making new friends.

Gary Soto, an award-winning poet, is renowned for getting at the heart of a young person's everyday life. In these eleven stories, performed with spice and energy by young actors Stephanie Diaz and Miguel Gongora, Soto again scores. With a sensitivity and humor born from his own experiences while growing up in California's Central Valley, the author brings to the surface issues such as success and failure, honesty and deceit, love and friendship....

It all starts when Marisa picks up the wrong cell phone. When she returns it to Rene, she feels curiously drawn to him. But Marisa and Rene aren't exactly a match made in heaven. For one thing, Marisa is a chola, she's a lot of girl, and she's not ashamed of it. Skinny Rene gangles like a sackful of elbows and wears a calculator on his belt. In other words, he's a geek. So why can't Marisa stay away from him? Includes a glossary of Spanish words and...

Fifth-grader Miata Ramirez is running for class president. Her best friend, Ana, is her running mate. The girls are stunned when they learn they are running against class clown Rudy Herrera and his friend Alex. At first Miata is certain she will win the election. She has big plans to make the school a better place. She'll clean up the graffiti, plant flowers and trees, and get computers. Rudy is confident he'll get the votes by promising longer

...

Marisol Luna is determined to keep dancing even though her family has moved to a Chicago suburb that doesn't have a dance studio.

Prolific writer Gary Soto introduces the beauty of the much neglected literary form, the "proverb." His proverbs are quirky, fun, urban and enlightening for all ages. Some people might consider the literary genre of proverbs to be stodgy or out of date, perhaps pretentious and irrelevant in our techy world. Not so with Meatballs for the People: Proverbs to Chew On. These proverbs are all original, all beckoning for verbal debate and discussion, and...

In his engaging new collection, National Book Award finalist Gary Soto creates poems that each begin with a line from Shakespeare and then continue in Soto's fresh and accessible verse. Drawing on moments from the sonnets, Hamlet, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, and others, Soto illuminates aspects of the source material while taking his poems in directions of their own, strategically employing the color of "thee" and "thine,"...

A poignant, humorous collection by acclaimed poet Gary Soto The fleeting emotions of teenagers, as changeable as the weather, ring true in these emotionally resonant poems. Told from the point of view of both boys and girls, narrators of various ethnicities fall in love for the first time, pine over crushes, and brood over broken hearts. Tender, lighthearted, and surprising, this collection will capture teens, tweens, and anyone who remembers what...