Stand Tall Molly Lou Melon

Author: Patty Lovell

Pub. Date: August 2001
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
ISBN-13: 9780399234163
ISBN: 0399234160
32 pages

Molly Lou Melon has many noteworthy attributes: she's buck-toothed, she's fumble-fingered, and she has a voice like "a bullfrog being squeezed by a boa constrictor." But this tiny girl has a quality even more compelling: the confidence to believe in herself no matter what anyone else says or does.
As the new kid in town, Molly Lou Melon could choose to hide her light when classmate Ronald Durkin challenges her sturdy self-esteem, calling her "SHRIMPO!" and "BUCKY-TOOTH BEAVER!" and taunting her voice: "You sound like a sick duck—HONK! HONK!" But our heroine blithely scores the winning touchdown in playground football, balances ten pennies on her teeth, bowls Ronald over with her powerful voice ("QUACK!"), and wins him over with a beautiful paper snowflake.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Author: Sherman Alexie

ISBN13:9780316013680

ISBN10: 0316013684

Pub. Date: 9/12/2007

Publisher(s): Little Brown & Co

 

Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author's own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings that reflect the character's art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he thought he was destined to live.


The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Alexie's YA debut, released in hardcover to instant success, receiving seven starred reviews, hitting numerous bestseller lists, and winning the 2007 National Book Award for Young People's Literature. 

Monster

Author: Walter Dean Myers

• Publisher: Amistad (May 8, 2001)
• ISBN-10: 0064407314
• ISBN-13: 978-0064407311
• 281 pages

"Monster" is what the prosecutor called 16-year-old Steve Harmon for his supposed role in the fatal shooting of a convenience-store owner. But was Steve really the lookout who gave the "all clear" to the murderer, or was he just in the wrong place at the wrong time? In this innovative novel by Walter Dean Myers, the reader becomes both juror and witness during the trial of Steve's life. To calm his nerves as he sits in the courtroom, aspiring filmmaker Steve chronicles the proceedings in movie script format. Interspersed throughout his screenplay are journal writings that provide insight into Steve's life before the murder and his feelings about being held in prison during the trial. "They take away your shoelaces and your belt so you can't kill yourself no matter how bad it is. I guess making you live is part of the punishment."

Of Mice and Men

Author: John Steinbeck

Publisher: Penguin Books
ISBN:0141023570
128 Pages


Two migrant workers, George and Lennie, have been let off a bus miles away from the California farm where they are due to start work. George is a small, dark man with “sharp, strong features.” Lennie, his companion, is his opposite, a giant of a man with a “shapeless” face. Overcome with thirst, the two stop in a clearing by a pool and decide to camp for the night. As the two converse, it becomes clear that Lennie has a mild mental disability, and is deeply devoted to George and dependent upon him for protection and guidance. George finds that Lennie, who loves petting soft things but often accidentally kills them, has been carrying and stroking a dead mouse. George angrily throws it away, fearing that Lennie might catch a disease from the dead animal. George complains loudly that his life would be easier without having to care for Lennie, but the reader senses that their friendship and devotion is mutual. He and Lennie share a dream of buying their own piece of land, farming it, and, much to Lennie’s delight, keeping rabbits. George ends the night by treating Lennie to the story he often tells him about what life will be like in such an idyllic place.

The next day, the men report to the nearby ranch. George, fearing how the boss will react to Lennie, insists that he’ll do all the talking. He lies, explaining that they travel together because they are cousins and that a horse kicked Lennie in the head when he was a child. They are hired. They meet Candy, an old “swamper,” or handyman, with a missing hand and an ancient dog, and Curley, the boss’s mean-spirited son. Curley is newly married, possessive of his flirtatious wife, and full of jealous suspicion. Once George and Lennie are alone in the bunkhouse, Curley’s wife appears and flirts with them. Lennie thinks she is “purty,” but George, sensing the trouble that could come from tangling with this woman and her husband, warns Lennie to stay away from her. Soon, the ranch-hands return from the fields for lunch, and George and Lennie meet Slim, the skilled mule driver who wields great authority on the ranch. Slim comments on the rarity of friendship like that between George and Lennie. Carlson, another ranch-hand, suggests that since Slim’s dog has just given birth, they should offer a puppy to Candy and shoot Candy’s old, good-for-nothing dog.

The next day, George confides in Slim that he and Lennie are not cousins, but have been friends since childhood. He tells how Lennie has often gotten them into trouble. For instance, they were forced to flee their last job because Lennie tried to touch a woman’s dress and was accused of rape. Slim agrees to give Lennie one of his puppies, and Carlson continues to badger Candy to kill his old dog. When Slim agrees with Carlson, saying that death would be a welcome relief to the suffering animal, Candy gives in. Carlson, before leading the dog outside, promises to do the job painlessly.

Slim goes to the barn to do some work, and Curley, who is maniacally searching for his wife, heads to the barn to accost Slim. Candy overhears George and Lennie discussing their plans to buy land, and offers his life’s savings if they will let him live there too. The three make a pact to let no one else know of their plan. Slim returns to the bunkhouse, berating Curley for his suspicions. Curley, searching for an easy target for his anger, finds Lennie and picks a fight with him. Lennie crushes Curley’s hand in the altercation. Slim warns Curley that if he tries to get George and Lennie fired, he will be the laughingstock of the farm.

The next night, most of the men go to the local brothel. Lennie is left with Crooks, the lonely, black stable-hand, and Candy. Curley’s wife flirts with them, refusing to leave until the other men come home. She notices the cuts on Lennie’s face and suspects that he, and not a piece of machinery as Curley claimed, is responsible for hurting her husband. This thought amuses her. The next day, Lennie accidentally kills his puppy in the barn. Curley’s wife enters and consoles him. She admits that life with Curley is a disappointment, and wishes that she had followed her dream of becoming a movie star. Lennie tells her that he loves petting soft things, and she offers to let him feel her hair. When he grabs too tightly, she cries out. In his attempt to silence her, he accidentally breaks her neck.

Lennie flees back to a pool of the Salinas River that George had designated as a meeting place should either of them get into trouble. As the men back at the ranch discover what has happened and gather together a lynch party, George joins Lennie. Much to Lennie’s surprise, George is not mad at him for doing “a bad thing.” George begins to tell Lennie the story of the farm they will have together. As he describes the rabbits that Lennie will tend, the sound of the approaching lynch party grows louder. George shoots his friend in the back of the head.
When the other men arrive, George lets them believe that Lennie had the gun, and George wrestled it away from him and shot him. Only Slim understands what has really happened, that George has killed his friend out of mercy. Slim consolingly leads him away, and the other men, completely puzzled, watch them leave.

Lord of the Flies

Author: William Golding

Publisher: Berkeley Publishing Group 

ISBN: 9780399501487

Publish Date: 6/1/1959 

In the midst of a raging war, a plane evacuating a group of schoolboys from Britain is shot down over a deserted tropical island. Two of the boys, Ralph and Piggy, discover a conch shell on the beach, and Piggy realizes it could be used as a horn to summon the other boys. Once assembled, the boys set about electing a leader and devising a way to be rescued. They choose Ralph as their leader, and Ralph appoints another boy, Jack, to be in charge of the boys who will hunt food for the entire group.

Ralph, Jack, and another boy, Simon, set off on an expedition to explore the island. When they return, Ralph declares that they must light a signal fire to attract the attention of passing ships. The boys succeed in igniting some dead wood by focusing sunlight through the lenses of Piggy’s eyeglasses. However, the boys pay more attention to playing than to monitoring the fire, and the flames quickly engulf the forest. A large swath of dead wood burns out of control, and one of the youngest boys in the group disappears, presumably having burned to death.

At first, the boys enjoy their life without grown-ups and spend much of their time splashing in the water and playing games. Ralph, however, complains that they should be maintaining the signal fire and building huts for shelter. The hunters fail in their attempt to catch a wild pig, but their leader, Jack, becomes increasingly preoccupied with the act of hunting.

When a ship passes by on the horizon one day, Ralph and Piggy notice, to their horror, that the signal fire—which had been the hunters’ responsibility to maintain—has burned out. Furious, Ralph accosts Jack, but the hunter has just returned with his first kill, and all the hunters seem gripped with a strange frenzy, reenacting the chase in a kind of wild dance. Piggy criticizes Jack, who hits Piggy across the face. Ralph blows the conch shell and reprimands the boys in a speech intended to restore order. At the meeting, it quickly becomes clear that some of the boys have started to become afraid. The littlest boys, known as “littluns,” have been troubled by nightmares from the beginning, and more and more boys now believe that there is some sort of beast or monster lurking on the island. The older boys try to convince the others at the meeting to think rationally, asking where such a monster could possibly hide during the daytime. One of the littluns suggests that it hides in the sea—a proposition that terrifies the entire group.

Not long after the meeting, some military planes engage in a battle high above the island. The boys, asleep below, do not notice the flashing lights and explosions in the clouds. A parachutist drifts to earth on the signal-fire mountain, dead. Sam and Eric, the twins responsible for watching the fire at night, are asleep and do not see the parachutist land. When the twins wake up, they see the enormous silhouette of his parachute and hear the strange flapping noises it makes. Thinking the island beast is at hand, they rush back to the camp in terror and report that the beast has attacked them.

The boys organize a hunting expedition to search for the monster. Jack and Ralph, who are increasingly at odds, travel up the mountain. They see the silhouette of the parachute from a distance and think that it looks like a huge, deformed ape. The group holds a meeting at which Jack and Ralph tell the others of the sighting. Jack says that Ralph is a coward and that he should be removed from office, but the other boys refuse to vote Ralph out of power. Jack angrily runs away down the beach, calling all the hunters to join him. Ralph rallies the remaining boys to build a new signal fire, this time on the beach rather than on the mountain. They obey, but before they have finished the task, most of them have slipped away to join Jack.

Jack declares himself the leader of the new tribe of hunters and organizes a hunt and a violent, ritual slaughter of a sow to solemnize the occasion. The hunters then decapitate the sow and place its head on a sharpened stake in the jungle as an offering to the beast. Later, encountering the bloody, fly-covered head, Simon has a terrible vision, during which it seems to him that the head is speaking. The voice, which he imagines as belonging to the Lord of the Flies, says that Simon will never escape him, for he exists within all men. Simon faints. When he wakes up, he goes to the mountain, where he sees the dead parachutist. Understanding then that the beast does not exist externally but rather within each individual boy, Simon travels to the beach to tell the others what he has seen. But the others are in the midst of a chaotic revelry—even Ralph and Piggy have joined Jack’s feast—and when they see Simon’s shadowy figure emerge from the jungle, they fall upon him and kill him with their bare hands and teeth.

The following morning, Ralph and Piggy discuss what they have done. Jack’s hunters attack them and their few followers and steal Piggy’s glasses in the process. Ralph’s group travels to Jack’s stronghold in an attempt to make Jack see reason, but Jack orders Sam and Eric tied up and fights with Ralph. In the ensuing battle, one boy, Roger, rolls a boulder down the mountain, killing Piggy and shattering the conch shell. Ralph barely manages to escape a torrent of spears.

Ralph hides for the rest of the night and the following day, while the others hunt him like an animal. Jack has the other boys ignite the forest in order to smoke Ralph out of his hiding place. Ralph stays in the forest, where he discovers and destroys the sow’s head, but eventually, he is forced out onto the beach, where he knows the other boys will soon arrive to kill him. Ralph collapses in exhaustion, but when he looks up, he sees a British naval officer standing over him. The officer’s ship noticed the fire raging in the jungle. The other boys reach the beach and stop in their tracks at the sight of the officer. Amazed at the spectacle of this group of bloodthirsty, savage children, the officer asks Ralph to explain. Ralph is overwhelmed by the knowledge that he is safe but, thinking about what has happened on the island, he begins to weep. The other boys begin to sob as well. The officer turns his back so that the boys may regain their composure.

To Kill A Mockingbird

Author: Harper Lee

Harper Collins
ASIN 978-0060194994
281 pages

To Kill a Mockingbird is a coming-of-age story of Scout Finch and her brother, Jem, in 1930's Alabama. Through their neighborhood meanderings and the example of their father, they grow to understand that the world isn't always fair and that prejudice is a very real aspect of their world no matter how subtle it seems.

 The summer when Scout was six and Jem was ten, they met Dill, a little boy who spent the summer with his aunt who lived next door to the Finches. Dill and Jem become obsessed with the idea of making Boo Radley, the neighborhood recluse, come out of his home. They go through plan after plan, but nothing draws him out. However, these brushes with the neighborhood ghost result in a tentative friendship over time and soon the Finch children realize that Boo Radley deserves to live in peace, so they leave him alone.

Scout and Jem's God-like father, Atticus, is a respected and upstanding lawyer in small Maycomb County. When he takes on a case that pits innocent, black Tom Robinson against two dishonest white people, Atticus knows that he will lose, but he has to defend the man or he can't live with himself. The case is the biggest thing to hit Maycomb County in years and it turns the whole town against Atticus, or so it seems. Scout and Jem are forced to bear the slurs against their father and watch with shock and disillusionment as their fellow townspeople convict an obviously innocent man because of his race. The only real enemy that Atticus made during the case was Bob Ewell, the trashy white man who accused Tom Robinson of raping his daughter. Despite Ewell's vow to avenge himself against Atticus, Atticus doesn't view Ewell as any real threat.

Tom Robinson is sent to a work prison to await another trial, but before Atticus can get him to court again, Tom is shot for trying to escape the prison. It seems that the case is finally over and life returns to normal until Halloween night. On the way home from a pageant, Bob Ewell attacks Jem and Scout in the darkness. After Jem's arm is badly broken, their ghostly neighbor, Boo Radley, rescues Scout and her brother. In order to protect Boo's privacy, the sheriff decides that Bob Ewell fell on his own knife while he was struggling with Jem. Boo Radley returns home never to be seen again.

Through the events of those two years, Scout learns that no matter their differences or peculiarities, the people of the world and of Maycomb County are all people. No one is lesser or better than anyone else because they're all people. She realizes that once you get to know them, most people are good and kind no matter what they seem like on the outside.

The First Part Last

Author: Angela Johnson
Summary courtesy of: teenreads.com


Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 0689849222
144 pages


This brief novel alternates chapters between "then" and "now." The "then" is the story of Nia's pregnancy, as Bobby and Nia struggle to decide whether to raise their child or cave to parental pressure and give her up for adoption. The "now" is Bobby's own struggle to do the right thing for his infant daughter Feather, as a tragedy surrounding her birth has left him to care for her alone. Bobby is lucky to have a good support system, including his mother and father, his buddies, and his caring older brother. All along, Bobby's voice, which narrates the story, wavers between great love for his daughter and panic at his situation, but the emotional heart of the story never falters.

Inside Out

Author: Terry Trueman
Summary courtesy of: myshelf.com/author review

Publisher: Harper Tempest / HarperCollins
Release Date: August 1, 2003
ISBN: 0066239621 


 Zach suspects that things might not be going well when two armed teens burst into the coffee shop where he is waiting for his mother. When their attempted hold-up goes wrong, the teens take everyone in the shop hostage, including the confused Zach. What the robbers don’t realize is that Zach suffers from paranoid adolescent schizophrenia. This condition has left the boy, even with proper medication, in a state of never really knowing the motivations behind other people’s emotions and actions. It also means that if he doesn’t get his medicine on time, two of his worst mental projections, Dirtbag and Rat, may come and torment him to the point of suicide. And time is running out…

Getting It

Author: Alex Sanchez
Summary courtesy of: alexsanchez.com

Published on: 2007-10-09
240 pages
ISBN13: 9781416908982

It's embarrassing enough that Carlos Amoroso is fifteen and the only virgin among his friends, but he's never even really kissed a girl. The object of Carlos's desire, Roxy Rodriguez, is popular and hot--and has no idea that Carlos is alive. But watching a TV show one night gives Carlos an idea: What if he got a makeover from Sal, the guy at school everyone thinks is gay? Asking Sal to do him a favor is harder than it seems, because Carlos is worried that if any of his friends see him with Sal, they'll think that he's gay too.

The Skin Im In

Author: Sharon G. Flake
Summary courtesy of: Sharongflake.com

Paperback, 176 pages

Published January 3rd 2000 by Jump At The Sun (first published 1998)

more details...

ISBN: 0786813075 (ISBN13: 9780786813070)

Literary awards:John Steptoe New Talent Author Award for Author (1999)

Thirteen-year old Maleeka Madison is tall, skinny, and dark-skinned.  That's a problem for her, because it's such a problem for everyone else at school, it seems.  To make her life easier, Maleeka befriends the toughest girl in school.  Only bullies force you to pay more than you’d like, so life for Maleeka just gets harder, until she learns to stand up for herself and love the skin she's in.

Sahara Special

Publisher::	Hyperion Books For Children,
Pub date::	c2003.
Pages::	175 p.
ISBN::	0786807938

There are two files on Sahara Jones. The one the school counselor keeps is evidence that she is a fifth grader who needs special education. The other is the book Sahara is secretly writing, her Heart-Wrenching Life Story and Amazing Adventures.
The latest chapter in her book unfolds when her mother insists that she be taken out of special ed. So Sahara is facing fifth grade in the regular classroom, again. But why even try to do work, Sahara wonders, if everything she does just winds up in the counselor's file?
Enter Miss Pointy, the new fifth-grade teacher. With her eggplant-colored lipstick and strange subjects, such as "Puzzling" and "Time Travel," she's like no other teacher Sahara has ever known. When she passes out writing journals to the class, Sahara begins to have fresh hope for the school year. Through Miss Pointy's unusual teaching, storytelling and quiet support, Sahara finds the courage to overcome her fears and prove which file shows her true self.
Laugh-out-loud dialogue and unforgettable characters distinguish Esme Raji Codell's debut novel about a troubled but talented student, and the inspiring teacher whose belief in her changes her life.

The Man Who Loved Clowns

Wood, June Rae THE MAN WHO LOVED CLOWNS New York : G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1992. IL YA ISBN 0399218882
In this potent debut, Wood displays a prodigious writing and storytelling talent. Delrita, 13, has recently moved to a small Missouri town with her parents and Punky, an uncle who has Down's syndrome. Delrita adores Punky, yet is also embarrassed by him. She easily accepts his childish ways at home, but avoids having visitors, and attending church in her new community causes the girl considerable anguish. Always a loner, Punky is befriended by the persistent Avanelle Shackleford (``a name that was almost bigger than she was''), a classmate who also has familial shame--and a fabulous older brother. When disaster tears Delrita's life apart, her new friends' support fortifies her as does Punky's enduring love. The skillfully crafted work, based on the author's memory of a brother who had Down's syndrome, is enriched by humorous touches and Delrita's involving, simply told narrative. This close-up view of a prevalent disease is more than a one-note novel: the author also artfully interweaves issues of loneliness, first romance and parental death. Both Delrita and Punky are complex, realistically drawn characters worthy of attention and admiration. Ages 10-14. (Oct.)

Chrysanthemum

Book by: Kevin Henkes

Summary provided by Hub Pages Childrens Book Review

Kevin Henkes' title character is a cute little mouse with a very big name. Chrysanthemum loves her name, and can even spell it, but when she goes to school, she is mercilessly teased by a group of nasty little mouselets who use her name as an excuse to pick on her. Chrysanthemum goes home each night to her caring and concerned parents, who tell her she is winsome and winning, and although Chrysanthemum is reassured that she is the center of her parents' universe, her parents' concern doesn't solve the problem. Finally, at school, Chrysanthemum meets a fabulous new music teacher whom all of the mouse children adore. Ms. Twinkle is a ray of sunshine, and when she produces a musical play, Chrysanthemum is chosen to be a daisy.
When Chrysanthemum confides in her teacher about the way the other children are teasing her, Mrs. Twinkle restores Chrysanthemum's confidence, and makes her the envy of all her peers.

A Red Polka Dot in a World Full of Plaid

Author: Varian Johnson

Summary courtesy of Google books

Maxine Phillips is a walking oxymoron. She'd rather spend her Saturday nights reading comic books and eating burritos than going on dates like other eighteen-year-olds. She hasn't been to church or even attempted to pray in the last three years, yet her best friend, Deke, is a devout Christian. And while Deke claims her caramel complexion, wild cherry-brown hair, and gray eyes make her look exotic, she thinks she looks like a freak of nature. Maxine's life gets even stranger when she learns the father she thought dead is alive, and that her mother has been lying about his death for all of Maxine's life. On impulse, Maxine decides to drive from her hometown in South Carolina to the small town in Oklahoma where her father lives. In typical Maxine fashion, she leaves without her mother's permission, and when her car breaks down en route, she convinces Deke to pick her up and take her the rest of the way. Maxine arrives in Oklahoma, expecting Jack Phillips to be the father of her dreams. Instead, she finds that her father, among other things, is a white ex-convict. Upon learning the truth about him, Maxine does the only thing she can do.

The House on Mango Street

Book by: Sandra Cisernos

Annotation by: Marya Summers

The acclaimed first book of fiction from the feminist poet Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street relates a young writer’s experiences as a Latina growing up poor in America in a series of powerful, poetic vignettes. Esperanza begins her story with the introduction of the house in the opening, eponymous chapter. The one-bedroom house, shared by six, represents progress for her family: they are finally homeowners. Still, the narrator is ashamed of the house, which both demonstrates poverty and symbolizes girlhood; the house is personified and depicted as “small,” “red,” “tight,” and “swollen” (4) – terms easily interpreted as symbolically vaginal in this coming of age story. The narrator’s quest is to escape this house so that she may return on her own terms and help those who could not escape.

Presenting issues of gender and poverty in the Hispanic community, Cisneros explores the psychology of the female experience through her narrator. Women are often sexual prey and property, both victimized and protected in men’s houses. Some women own their own property (like Edna and her mother), and even then, men pose a danger (Edna’s brother sold it when they weren’t looking). Edna now owns a home and lives alone with only a daughter. The house becomes a symbol for the world. Esperanza dreams of owning her own house. “Not a flat. Not an apartment. Not a man’s house. Not a daddy’s. A house all my own” (108). She wants her own world – a complete one on her terms.

While the book exists as written text, it reads like spoken language with all its fluidity, lapsing into dialogue without quotation marks (sometimes without paragraph breaks) and shifting person without warning. This chatty quality contributes to the sense of the narrator as an authentic, dynamic person. The author effectively disappears behind her narrator, whose voice matures as she does.

The author’s word choice adds to the richness and resonance of Esperanza’s story. It is no accident that Esperanza means two different things. That “in English it means hope” (10) suggests that her command of the language is her hope, her ticket out of poverty; that it means “sadness” and “waiting” (10) in Spanish asserts the disadvantages she has inherited. Cisneros gives her narrator a simple vocabulary that still is capable of imaginative descriptions and keen observations. In this way, the author is true to her character as she presents her narrator as writer-material. In essence, as Cisneros creates Esperanza as a writer, she creates Esperanza in the reader for the narrator’s chance at a literary future.

Furthermore, Cisneros’ syntax and grammar reflect the psychology of the narrator. For instance, in an early chapter like “Hairs,” Esperanza relates her observations about the family members’ hair in short, simple sentences – that is, until she gets to her mother. Then she devotes an entire paragraph for indulgent and convoluted description. However, the paragraph is comprised of only one sentence and a fragment, and even in all her linguistic zigs and zags, the narrator achieves the grammatical sophistication of only a compound sentence. In fact, throughout the book, complex sentences are few.

For all its chattiness, for its convolutions and repetitions, there is something lean in this approach to story-telling. As vignettes, it works as the memory does, recalling the past as a series of images told in the voice of the self at the time. The reader is given only those scenes that are essential to portraying the emotional and psychological experience of the narrator’s childhood. Rather than providing a traditional, linear narrative, where one event leads to the next, (though the events are told in a chronological sequence), Mango Street gives us Esperanza’s episodic reportage. Her vignettes are like the house’s tiny windows, both offer glimpses of a vast world.

Though there is no true resolution (the narrator’s life is still in progress, after all), the book concludes with the chapter “Mango Says Goodbye Sometimes,” which echoes the opening chapter. Reminded of the family’s slow progress, the reader believes Esperanza’s resolute dream that her writing will liberate her from Mango, but as the book concludes, hers is a dream yet unrealized.

This book was recommended to me because as I have been writing my memoir, the story has been presenting itself in a series of unrelated scenes rather than as a fluid, cohesive narrative. Because, like Cisneros, I was a poet before I tried my hand at storytelling, my vignettes also have a poetic quality. Reading The House on Mango Street provided me with a fine example of how a series of vignettes can effectively develop character and advance a narrative. The book also helped me to appreciate not only what was so artfully and movingly presented, but what was missing; a few well chosen scenes can go a long way if their language uses the compression that is usually more often employed in poetry than in prose.