August's not-to-miss Book Pick is Meg Medina's YAQUI DELGADO WANTS TO KICK YOUR ASS. Meg won an SCBWI Golden Kite for Picture Book text a few years ago, and this year won the Pura Belpre prize for YAQUI. From the first sentence to the last, Piddy's story grabbed me and wouldn't let me go.
Piddy Sanchez has just changed schools. And, suddenly, someone is threatening to beat her up. Piddy tries to find out who Yaqui Delgado is, and why someone she doesn't even know would want to stir up trouble. At first, Piddy struggles to make sense of the situation, but soon we see her begin to evolve. At her old school, Piddy was a high achiever in all her classes, had a group of friends, and was on track for college and a degree in biology. She worked a Saturday job, and was close to her mom, and her mom's best friend Lila. Now Piddy begins to shut down, missing assignments, cutting school, and fighting with those who love her best.
What the author has done is to bring us in just as the change was beginning. Each scene lays the building blocks for what follows. Rather than meeting Piddy as a troubled character, the novel expertly traces her change, and we see how it becomes possible to turn into a completely different person, practically overnight.
Medina also gives us a way to understand Yaqui. She's the source of a very scary problem, and therefore she's not given anything close to a free pass on what she's done, but we do get a glimpse of why she may have turned out this way. She's a good model for building a complex adversarial character.
And the other secondary characters are well drawn, too. Mami and Lila are given complete personalities, and I felt like I understood Mitzi. Piddy's relationship with Joey is masterful, flirting on the edge of trouble, but nicely handled indeed.
I think the setting was solidly created. I'm from Queens, and I liked the feelings it evoked--it felt familiar, full of smells and cement, full of all kinds of people both good and bad, while at the same time reminding me that I'm glad I'm not there anymore. (Piddy was lucky that she had one bathroom in the school she could use. In Junior High, I couldn't use any.)
I also think that the wrap-up was realistic and strong and, for-goodness-sakes, I cried as Piddy's story concludes.
Has anyone else read YAQUI DELGADO WANTS TO KICK YOUR ASS?
--Lynn
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