Showing results by narrator "Victoria Villarreal" in All Categories

Luz Veliz is a soccer star—or rather, she was a soccer star. With her serious knee injury, it's unlikely she'll be back on the field anytime soon. But without soccer, who is she? Even her dad treats her differently now—like he doesn't know her or, worse, like he doesn't even like her. When Luz discovers she has a knack for coding, it feels like a lifeline to a better self. If she can just ace the May Showcase, she'll not only skip a level in her coding courses and impress Ms. Freeman and intriguing, brilliant Trevor—she'll have her parents cheering her on from the sidelines.

Some days, ten-year-old Margarita Sandoval feels as if the wind might blow her away. The country has been gripped by the Great Depression, so times are hard everywhere. Then she has to leave her familia in New Mexico—especially her beloved Abuelita—to move to Fort Steele, Wyoming, where her father has taken a job on the railroad. When Margarita meets Caroline, she's excited to have a friend her own age in Wyoming. But it often seems like Caroline, like many other people in town, doesn't understand or appreciate the Sandovals' Hispanic heritage.

Until now, you've only heard one side of the story, about migrants crossing borders, drawn to the promise of a better life. In reality, Mexicans were on this land long before any borders existed. Here's the true story of America, from the Mexican American perspective.

What Elisa, Lucia, and Alice see–and judge–of each other from the outside is drastically different from how each girl feels inside. They attend the same classes in the same New York City middle school, but no one knows that Elisa is trying to navigate the bewildering asylum process having just arrived from El Salvador; or that Lucia, who also speaks Spanish and brims with self-confidence, is caught in the middle of her parents’ heartbreaking divorce; or that Alice, who appears to be a rebel in combat boots, carries the burden of her mother’s progressing cancer.

Lucía loves to watch the monarchs' migration from her home in Mexico with Papá. But this year, the monarchs' journey north holds extra weight; Papá is heading north, too, to look for work. He promises her that when "the weather turns cold and the monarcas return, our winged ancestors will guide me home." So while he spends the summer months harvesting produce on faraway farms, Lucía watches the skies for signs of the monarchs'—and her papá's—return.

A heartwarming tale of a girl waiting for her beloved Papá to return when the monarchs fly south to their home in Mexico. Lucía loves to watch the monarchs' migration from her home in Mexico with Papá. But this year, the monarchs' journey north holds extra weight; Papá is heading north, too, to look for work. He promises her that when "the weather turns cold and the monarcas return, our winged ancestors will guide me home." So while he spends the summer months harvesting produce on faraway farms, Lucía watches the skies for signs of the monarchs'—and her papá's—return.

Ever since Precious Perez was a child, she has loved music. Her family always praised her singing, saying she could even attend Berklee College of Music one day—planting a seed that would become her dream. Precious was born two and a half months prematurely and weighed just one pound. Her eyes did not fully develop, and she is blind. With an engaging, accessible voice, Precious delivers an empowering first-person account of her determination to achieve her dreams, even with the world stacking the odds against her.

Lety Muñoz's first language is Spanish, and she likes to take her time putting her words together. She loves volunteering at the animal shelter because the dogs and cats there don't care if she can't always find the right words. When the shelter needs a volunteer to write animal profiles, Lety jumps at the chance. But classmate Hunter also wants to write profiles—so he devises a competition to determine the official shelter scribe. Whoever gets their animals adopted the fastest wins.

From David Levithan’s story about a non-binary kid collecting pieces of other people’s collections to Jenny Torres Sanchez's tale of a girl gathering types of fire while trying not to get burned to G. Neri's piece about 1970's skaters seeking opportunities to go vertical—anything can be collected and in the hands of these award-winning and bestselling authors, any collection can tell a story. Nine of the best YA novelists working today have written fiction based on a prompt from Printz-winner A.S. King (who also contributes a story) and the result is itself an extraordinary collection.

In the heart of the Great Depression, Rancho Las Moras, like everywhere else in Texas, is gripped by the drought of the Dust Bowl, and resentment is building among white farmers against Mexican Americans. All around town, signs go up proclaiming “No Dogs or Mexicans” and “No Mexicans Allowed.” When Estrella organizes a protest against the treatment of tejanos in their town of Monteseco, Texas, her whole family becomes a target of “repatriation” efforts to send Mexicans “back to Mexico”—whether they were ever Mexican citizens or not.

Last year, Maggie and Nora didn’t exactly get the summer of their dreams. Instead, they had to survive a camp run by a covert clan of vampires. But this year, Camp Sylvania is back and under new management—gentle, hippie-dippie Luna Lupowski. So the girls are convinced to give camp another try.

Emilia and Gregorio spent their childhood following their grandmother through the mountains of central México, gathering the ingredients she used for curandera work and learning about the supernatural world. When she passes away, the siblings are left alone. So they scrape together their money and pay coyotes to smuggle them to their father in the United States. The siblings are exhausted before they even reach the border, where the coyotes seize Emilia for their own harsh ends.