This is a charming collection of
poems written by a middle-schooler living on the border, not only between Texas
and Mexico, but also between grade school and young man, and the border of
cultures: as a “guero” his fair-skin can complicate his life as he lives on the
border between being hispanic and white. While his classmates might tease him
for fair skin and red hair, his father admonishes him to use those attributes
to help open doors for the rest of the family.
In my favorite poem, Spanish Birds,
Bowles compares the different “melodies” that each of his family members uses
when speaking Spanish to different kinds of birdsong. It evokes my most
significant takeaway from this book–Bowles’ family is made up of quite the cast
of characters and they’re held together by their love for one another.
Of course, you can’t have a book
about a middle-schooler that doesn’t feature a confrontation with a bully, and
this is no exception . . . except that . . . when the bully calls him a name,
the hero of our story retaliates by writing a furious and clever poem in rap.
Poem by poem, Bowles constructs a world
and furnishes it with scenes and characters that engage the reader and enrich
their understanding of life on the border.
I read a lot of YA books about
immigrants/refugees/New Americans; I’m especially interested in stories told
from the viewpoint of the children. This one was particularly engaging.
[
publisher’s official They
Call Me Guero web page ] | [ official David Bowles web site ]
Have you read this one? What
did you think? Did you find this review helpful?
New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!
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