Books about Latinos from Amazon.com

Amazon Best of the Month, September 2007: It's been 11 years since Junot Díaz's critically acclaimed story collection, Drown, landed on bookshelves and from page one of his debut novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, any worries of a sophomore jinx disappear. The titular Oscar is a 300-pound-plus "lovesick ghetto nerd" with zero game (except for Dungeons & Dragons) who cranks out pages of fantasy fiction with the hopes of becoming a Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien. The book is also the story of a multi-generational family curse that courses through the book, leaving troubles and tragedy in its wake. This was the most dynamic, entertaining, and achingly heartfelt novel I've read in a long time. My head is still buzzing with the memory of dozens of killer passages that I dog-eared throughout the book. The rope-a-dope narrative is funny, hip, tragic, soulful, and bursting with desire. Make some room for Oscar Wao on your bookshelf--you won't be disappointed. --Brad Thomas Parsons.
Price: $13.73 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Made with the Best Quality Material with your child in mind.. Top Quality Children's Item..
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Subtitled A Tale of a Peddler, Some Monkeys and Their Monkey Business, this absurd and very simple story has become a classic, selling hundreds of thousands of copies since its first publication in 1940. A peddler walks around selling caps from a tall, tottering pile on his head. Unable to sell a single cap one morning, he walks out into the countryside, sits down under a tree, checks that all the caps are in place, and falls asleep. When he wakes up, the caps are gone--and the tree is full of cap-wearing monkeys. His attempts to get the caps back generate the kind of repetitive rhythm that 3- and 4-year-olds will adore. (Preschool and older) --Richard Farr.
Price: $3.12 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Buenas noches, Luna
por Margaret Wise Brown
Ilustrado por Clement Hurd

En una gran habitación verde, arropado en su cama, está un conejito
-- Buenas noches, habitación.
-- Buenas noches, Luna -- dice el conejito

Y así sucesivamente, le da las buenas noches a todas las cosas que reconoce en su cuarto: al cuadro de los tres ositos sentaditos en sus sillas, a los relojes y a los calcetines, a los gatitos juguetones y a los lindos mitones.

En este cuento clásico de la literatura infantil, adorado por generaciones de niños, la poesía que encierra su texto y la ternura de sus bellas ilustraciones con-vierten a éste en un libro ideal para culminar el día.

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Michael Arroyo has a pitching arm that throws serious heat. But his firepower is nothing compared to the heat Michael faces in his day-to-day life. Newly orphaned after his father led the family’s escape from Cuba, Michael’s only family is his seventeen-yearold brother Carlos. If Social Services hears of their situation, they will be separated in the foster-care system—or worse, sent back to Cuba. Together, the boys carry on alone, dodging bills and anyone who asks too many questions. But then someone wonders how a twelve-year-old boy could possibly throw with as much power as Michael Arroyo throws. With no way to prove his age, no birth certificate, and no parent to fight for his cause, Michael’s secret world is blown wide open, and he discovers that family can come from the most unexpected sources..
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It's time for Dora's checkup at the dentist Dora explores the dentist's office, gets her teeth cleaned, and more! She even gets a special treat for being such a good patient!

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Readers familiar with immigration history as told in books like Roger Daniels's Coming to America will experience a sense of déjà vu with Harvest of Empire by Juan Gonzalez The immigrant experience is a constant in American life; although the tides ebb and flow, it seems that there always has been an immigrant presence in the United States. What's different today, of course, is where the immigrants are coming from: half are Latin American.

Gonzalez, a columnist for the New York Daily News, studies these latest arrivals in a book that combines history and journalism. He has a keen understanding of Hispanic diversity, focusing not just on "Hispanics" as a monolithic category but as a variety of people from many nations. The politics in Harvest of Empire are often tendentious: Gonzalez unfavorably compares U.S. border control efforts to building the Great Wall in China, demands an end to Puerto Rico's "colonial status," insists that Spanish become an official language actively encouraged in the public schools, and so on. His agenda will no doubt appeal to a certain kind of reader, but at the cost of alienating many others, including, probably, a majority of Hispanics living in the United States. For those looking for a left-leaning account of Hispanic immigration, however, this book succeeds as an ambitious survey. --John J. Miller.
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The Grumpy Old Troll was mean to his friend Mouse -- and now he needs help from Dora and Boots for Mouse to forgive him. But what should he say? Join Dora and Boots as they help the Troll, and learn about manners along the way!.
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What would life be like for a teen living under a dictatorship? Afraid to go to school or to talk freely? Knowing that, at the least suspicion, the secret police could invade your house, even search and destroy your private treasures? Or worse, that your father or uncles or brothers could be suddenly taken away to be jailed or tortured or killed? Such experiences have been all too common in the many Latin American dictatorships of the last 50 years. Author Julia Alvarez (How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents) and her family escaped from the Trujillo regime in the Dominican Republic when she was 10, but in Before We Were Free she imagines, through the stories of her cousins and friends, how it was for those who stayed behind.

Twelve-year-old Anita de la Torre is too involved with her own life to be more than dimly aware of the growing menace all around her, until her last cousins and uncles and aunts have fled to America and a fleet of black Volkswagens comes up the drive, bringing the secret police to the family compound to search their houses. Gradually, through overheard conversations and the explanations of her older sister, Lucinda, she comes to understand that her father and uncles are involved in a plot to kill El Jefe, the dictator, and that they are all in deadly peril. Anita's story is universal in its implications--she even keeps an Anne Frank-like diary when she and her mother must hide in a friend's house--and a tribute to those brave souls who feel, like Anita's father, that "life without freedom is no life at all." (Ages 10 to 14) --Patty Campbell.
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