Win-Over and 100 Hispanic and Latino Americans

Torres, Jennifer. Win-Over (The Do-Over #2)

February 7th 2023 by Scholastic Press

E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

After coping with the pandemic by staying at their father's ranch, Lucinda and Kel have realized that their mother and father aren't going to get back together. Instead, their father, Marcos, is getting married to his girlfriend, Syliva. They've made friends with Sylvia's daughter, Juliette, during the time that they were all living on the same ranch. For the wedding, everyone is traveling to Mexico to be with Sylvia's family. Not everyone is thrilled with the wedding, especially Sylvia's Tía Enriqueta, the matriarch who runs the Viramontes family farm outside Casa Grandes. Enriqueta doesn't feel that Marcos and his girls are really "family" to Sylvia yet, and that things are progressing too quickly. Even though everyone has traveled to her because Sylvia didn't want her to miss the wedding, the aunt says she won't attend. This is disquieting, and everyone reacts in different ways. The girls all try to think of things that they can do to prove that they are really family, such as helping to prune the apple orchard which has been neglected, but everything they do further angers the aunt. The farm has been failing for a while, and Sylvia is concerned that it will fold. One of the earlier successes of the farm was selling a family recipes for a special cookie, obleas. Kel finds a diary that Enriqueta had written when she was young, and finds the recipe as well as a long kept secret about it. Just when Enriqueta is about to share this with Sylvia, she finds that the recipe has gone missing, and Kel doesn't know what she did with it. The girls try to figure out the ingredients, working together with cousins who live on the farm. Will they be able to succeed, and win over the aunt in the process?

Strengths: It's good that each girl has her own interests, and a lot of the drama revolves around their devotion to their individual pursuits. Raquel even wants to miss the wedding because she doesn't want to be in Mexico, far away from the school newspaper. I'm always a fan of getting to know far flung relatives, and of traveling to new places, and this has a little bit of the flavor of Cartaya's Marcus Vega Doesn't Speak Spanish. There should be more books about blended families, and I would love to see more about children who have never had fathers in the picture, since that reflects the lives of so many of my students. This had a lot of humorous moments as well, and is generally upbeat in tone. 
Weaknesses: There is a lot of great stuff about blended families working together, but since the first book is firmly set during the pandemic, readers in ten years might need some background information! The style of illustration on the cover makes this seem younger than it is, which might make it harder to get into the hands of middle schoolers who otherwise would relaly enjoy the traveling and family antics. On the other hand, the cover and plot is somewhat similar to Fajardo's Miss Quinces, so maybe readers of that graphic novel can be enticed to read this series even though it's not in that format. 
What I really think: I enjoyed Stef Soto, Taco Queen, thought the fair setting of Flor and Miranda Steal the Show was fun, and ADORED The Fresh New Face of Griselda. Sadly, The Do-Over doesn't circulate as well as I'd hoped (few pandemic titles do), so I may pass on purchasing this worthy follow up. 

Laezman, Rick. 100 Hispanic and Latino Americans Who Shaped American History: A Biography Book for Kids and Teens 

February 2022 by Sourcebooks Explore

Copy provided by the publisher

Sourcebooks has a series of these "100" books (including 100 Disasters That Shaped History). They are great overviews of topics, and are the type of book that I would buy my children to take on long car trips, since there is so much information to dip into, but the books don't need to be read straight through. 

This is a well organized collective biography, starting with Ponce de Leon (born in 1460) and finishing with Selena (born 1971). I particularly like the timeline that appears at the bottom of the table of contents, since it shows the spread of years nicely. It's also very helpful to have the individual's dates of birth and death listed in the table of contents. 

There's a good mix of different careers. There are a number of entertainers (Ricardo Montalban, Celia Cruz, Desi Arnaz) , but also scientists (Severo Ochoa , Luis Alvarez), corporate executives, activists, and sports figures. The one page articles give an amazing amount of information, including the person's country of origin, highlights of life and career, and the all important paragraph about legacy and impact. I appreciated that there are lots of dates, so I didn't have to look up information on line. 

I always wish that these books had more photographs, but the Kris Dresen illustrations give a good feel for what the person looked like. A world map showing the distribution of where people were born would have been a good inclusion as well. This is an updated version of the 2002 original, and I'm not sure whether there were any new inclusions, if you already own that one. 

Not only does this book offer a print resource option for students who need to list one in their bibliographies, there is a lot of information. I teach my students to look for key words in order to improve their online searches, and this book conveniently has a lot of these in bold print in the articles. It will get a lot of use in my library.