Mayra Lazara Dole

I liked that this book on the left side was written in English and the right side was Spanish. This book is about a Spanish girl, who wants to play the drums for a festival. She disguises herself as a boy and plays the drums in the festival. Everyone is saying how good "he" is. She then takes of the mask, and they realize she is a girl. The bring her to her mom's work and her mom is very upset with her. Her mom eventually lets her go back to the festival, and her mom gets to hear how good of show more a drummer she truly is. I loved in this book, this little girl never gave up on her dreams. show less

Laura thinks her life is over when she gets thrown out of Catholic school, and then her mother's house, after being found out as a "tortillera"–Cuban slang for lesbian–but these things are only the beginning for her. Over the course of the next year, Laura leaves school entirely, works full time as a landscape artist, moves in with her best friend and her accepting mother, and makes an attempt to fall in love with a boy in order to once again be accepted by her mother and be able to see show more her little brother again. Laura's Cuban and Puerto Rican Miami community is full of interesting characters, and it is in these people that she finds she can change her definition of family to include people who aren't related to her by blood but will accept her for who she is. show less

I'm deeply conflicted about this book. While I loved the exuberance and sheer playfulness of the writing, it wasn't particularly tight writing- there was much meandering and several odd dangling plot elements. There is a lot going on in this book, some of which rings achingly, miserably true. The friendship between the main characters is lovely. It must be insanely hard to grow up gay and Cuban-American, and I think this book is a very welcome addition to the small body of literature for show more teens like Laura. The plot, while wildly discursive, was certainly engrossing enough. Recommended with reservations. show less

Everything changed for Laura the day her teacher read her love letter out loud. Laura's been dating Marlena for two years on the sly and suddenly the whole world knows she's a tortillera, a girl who loves girls. Laura's expelled from school and her mom kicks her out. Then Marlena is shipped off to Puerto Rico to marry a boy. But although she's hurting, big-hearted Laura's got a support network to hold her up while she figures things out. And eventually she'll figure out who she is and who show more will love and understand her down to the bone.

While I loved getting a unique perspective and couldn't help but like the vivacious Laura, there was too much telling and not enough showing. We're told that Laura's an environmentalist into making her own clothes and watching foreign films, but we never see any of that happening. There's a huge cast of characters in this novel and some random events that don't add to the story. I would have liked it better if it had been 150 pages shorter. That said, the Miami setting and cast of diverse characters make it stand out and I hope to see more from Ms. Dole. show less