ISBN 13: 978-0-385-73310-6. Hardcover, $15.99.
Book Awards:
2008- Button Blue Ribbon Book
2009- LatinoStories.com Top Ten New Latino Authors to Watch (and Read)
2009 Notable Books for a Global Society list
Mexican WhiteBoy chosen as a YALSA-ALA Top Ten Book of the year.
Annotation-Danny is a half white, half mexican child. He spends his summer in San Diego, with his Mexican cousins. Here he learns who he really is, and how to get a grip on himself and live up to his potential.
Book Talk:
"Danny loves to play baseball. It is his passion, it is something he loves to do because he did it with his father. He's good, too. He can throw a 95 mile an hour pitch, and he can hit a ball clear into tomorrow. The problem is that ever since his father left, Danny can't throw consistently when it counts. Because of this, Danny did not make the baseball team at his fancy prep school.
Danny has another problem. He is half white, and half hispanic. He doesn't know exactly who he is. Since his father left, he's not sure of anything.
When his mother announces that she has a new boyfriend, and that they are all going to move to San Francisco and move in with the boyfriend, Danny knows one thing for certain. He is not going to move into the boy friends' house.
Danny decides to spend the summer with his father's Mexican family in San Diego. He is hoping that he can save enough money while he is there so that he can join his father in Mexico at the end of the summer.
When we join the story, Danny and his favorite cousin, Sophia, have joined the action on the cul-de-sac. Sophia has introduced Danny to her friends, and a baseball game is in progress in the middle of the street. Sophia knows how much Danny loves to play ball, so she walks him over to the boys who are playing, and Danny is up at bat:
Danny waits on this one. Makes out white seams in a sea of yellow felt. Spinning through the air like a softball. Like a beach ball. Like a big spinning globe, the planet Earth. He locks in. Shifts his weight quick and turns on the pitch, drives the barrel through the zone.
Crushes it.
A muted gunshot sound carries across the lawn as the ball explodes off Danny's bat. Everybody looks up as the tennis ball soars above their heads, a tiny dot in the bright blue sky. A distant commuter plane. A drifting bird. One of the hawks his Dad used to stop and point out whenever they walked through the canyon.
The ball clears not only the Rodriguez roof but the roof of the house behind the Rodriguez house, too. It ends up on another street altogether, at a different address......
Secretly though, it makes him feel alive to crush something with a bat."
Join Danny as he struggles to find who he is, how to fit in with his family, and as he learns to play baseball on his terms in Mexican WhiteBoy by Matt de La Pina.
Author Web Site: http://mattdelapena.com/
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