With this post we welcome Erica Fry, a New York City middle-school teacher and dear friend, to our book reviewing team. Erica regularly reads middle-grade fiction to recommend to her students, and will be covering middle-grade fiction for teens and pre-teens on Punnybop.

On the surface, Matt De la Pena's Mexican WhiteBoy is a baseball story. Sixteen-year-old Danny Lopez spends the summer in National City, California with his dad’s side of the family, playing baseball and, through the game, coming into his own. Whether Danny is home with his mom, attending all-white Leucadia Prep, or hanging out in a cul-de-sac in National City, the game cuts across all boundaries and serves as his mooring on the turbulent sea of teenage life.

At heart, however, Mexican WhiteBoy is about how personal motivation grows and evolves - the fallout of acting on misplaced hopes contrasted with the freedom that comes from losing one’s illusions. Danny is handsome, silent, and full of potential, too brown to fit in Leucadia and too white to belong in National City. He speaks in gestures, getting by on shrugs and nods, all the while maintaining an internal dialogue with his father, whom he hasn’t seen in years. Danny’s dream, and his plan this summer, is to travel to Ensenada, Mexico, where his father is living, and track him down. A talented pitcher, Danny hustles to raise money for the trip and even visits a travel agency to find out about booking his flight. As the summer progresses, however, he wonders why he keeps putting it off.

De la Pena’s characters are gritty and compelling. He knows them inside and out, and has mastered their movements, their voices, the subtleties of their interactions. Though he tackles some challenging themes: mixed-race identity, self-mutilation and family violence among them, his treatment feels authentic, neither trite nor overreaching. He moves fluidly between nostalgia-inducing descriptions of playful games of truth or dare and unsentimental depictions of brutal violence. Though the book is written at about a sixth grade reading level, it is clearly intended for older readers (14+).

De la Pena’s previous book, Ball Don't Lie, was a Young Adult Library Services Association Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers. Readers who enjoyed Ball Don’t Lie will likely devour Mexican WhiteBoy, though parents concerned with violent content should preview the book for their children.

You can pick up Mexican WhiteBoy and Ball Don't Lie at Amazon.com. - Erica