Foto de l'autor

Rebecca Balcárcel

Autor/a de The Other Half of Happy

4 obres 146 Membres 9 Ressenyes

Obres de Rebecca Balcárcel

The Other Half of Happy (2019) 97 exemplars
Shine On, Luz Véliz! (2022) 30 exemplars
Ferry Crossing 1 exemplars

Etiquetat

Coneixement comú

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Membres

Ressenyes

- Age: Intermediate to middle school

- About a girl and her navigating life and her connecting with her culture. She starts 7th grade, makes friends, losses her grandma, and goes to Guatemala in the end.

- I did love this story because it was very diverse and it could connect with students and their lives.
 
Marcat
sabmcd | Hi ha 6 ressenyes més | Mar 8, 2024 |
Recommended Ages: Gr. 5-7, maybe 4

Plot Summary: Luz is devastated after a soccer injury has disrupted her entire life. Without soccer, she doesn't know who she is, doesn't have a relationship with her soccer coach dad, and doesn't really have any friends. She's tired of being super careful with her knee all the time, and really tired of her dad telling her to be careful. Trying to escape soccer class where she no longer has a job or any attention from the other girls, she walks into a robotics class. Finally, Luz starts to get excited about something else. Thankfully, her neighbor across the street, Mr. Mac, has the knowledge, desire, and equipment to get Luz caught up so she can join her same-age peers in Robotics 2 next year, but that means Luz has to put in a lot of hard work in the last 8-10 weeks of the school year. And there's a giant distraction coming soon: Luz and her family were surprised to learn that Luz has a half-sister living in Guatemala whose mom just died, so now she's coming to live with them. Solana immediately makes friends, has the positive attention of classmates, and takes away all the attention Luz was getting from her parents, good and bad. Will Luz and Solana find a way to make peace at school and at home? Will Luz be able to catch up on robotics and create a showcase project in a short amount of time?

Setting: suburban Texas

Characters:
Luz Veliz - 11 yo,
Solana - 13 yo, Luz's half-sister, was living in Guatemala until her mother died, no one in Luz's family knew about her until it was time for her to move to the US to live with them
Dad - AKA Emilio, was Luz's soccer coach for a long time and they had a great father/daughter relationship, has been distant and cold and only worried about Luz's knee since she got hurt and Luz feels like he doesn't really see her anymore
Mom - AKA Diana,
Mr. Mac - AKA Mr. MacLellan, lives across the street, his garage is a workshop full of computers and other building tools and materials
Trevor - boy in the robotics club, has a secret project for the showcase, talks easily to Solana but not to Luz
Alicia, Lorena, Mariana - girls in the ELL class with Solana
Skyler - Luz's closest friend on the soccer team but they didn't really hang out outside of soccer activities

Recurring Themes: soccer, family, surprise sister, sharing a room, confidence, identity, friendship

Controversial Issues:
One of the girls in the ELL class has a relative who was deported and murdered by a Guatemalan gang as soon as he got out of the airport in Guatemala, Solana's mom was also murdered in front of their home when Solana was home

Personal Thoughts: Despite some slow parts with description of coding, I loved the friendship and family relationships and the coming of age story. Luz had to redefine who she was and was lucky enough to have plenty of support with her new passion.

Genre: realistic fiction

Pacing: medium-slow, lots of descriptions of coding slow down the book
Characters:
Frame:
Storyline:

Activity:
… (més)
 
Marcat
pigeonlover | Jan 13, 2024 |
A collection of twenty fiction works with the common theme of the struggles of teenagers of mixed racial and ethnic backgrounds coming to terms with their own community and with society at large. What is great here is the wide variety of story themes and the consistency of the quality writing from a plethora of authors. This is a really good collection for teenagers for it deals with universal problems that they have.
 
Marcat
muddyboy | Jun 22, 2023 |
Engaging, emotionally full and complex. She flirts with putting too much in the book- I’m wary of authors checking boxes: gay character? Check. Special needs? Check. Trope-y bully? Check. But Balcarcel keeps it natural and weaves these characters/characteristics seamlessly into the storyline so well, a treat.
½
 
Marcat
quirkylibrarian | Hi ha 6 ressenyes més | Oct 11, 2021 |

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Estadístiques

Obres
4
Membres
146
Popularitat
#141,736
Valoració
4.2
Ressenyes
9
ISBN
9

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