Best-selling author Louanne Johnson (Dangerous Minds) has a new YA book due out from Random House in September 2009, Muchacho.
Eddie Corazon is an angry, but smart, guy. Since grade school he’s been working hard to maintain his image as a juvenile delinquent, but he’s a secret reader. He hangs out with his cousins in the rough barrios of Rosablanca, New Mexico, who always back him up (when they’re not in jail), but he won’t get himself involved in the robberies, drug deals and gang violence that surround him. But then he meet Lupe at school and over the course of his junior year, Eddie starts to notice, question, and think about the choices he’s made so far and where they might lead him.
In Muchacho, Johnson continues her compelling, authentic and no-nonsense style that started with Dangerous Minds. Eddie discovers that if someone can look you in the eye, see who you really are, and still believe in you, then you can harness the power of choice to change your outlook and circumstances. Eddie is fortunate enough to have 3 such people in his life: a teacher, Beecher (whose teaching style and outlook resonate with Johnson’s own from Dangerous Minds) although he isn’t ready to accept her when she’s in his classroom; his girlfriend Lupe, whose mature, honest and supportive outlook encourages Eddie to want to be more than he is; and finally, his Uncle Tio when he’s sent to live with him to get away from the trouble in the barrio.
Muchacho succeeds because Eddie’s voice, experience and outlook resonate with readers. His gradual realization that he has the power to choose to get out of the downward spiral of drugs, poverty and crime doesn’t feel contrived or forced and is made all the more real by Eddie’s peers whose choices contrast so sharply with his own. Johnson has a clear view of disenfranchised youth, and while this world is portrayed in a gritty, realistic light, ultimately Muchacho is thought-provoking, insightful and cautiously optimistic.
- Posted by Cori
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