MEXICAN WHITEBOY by Matt de la Peña (YA)

From the author of Ball Don't Lie comes another excellent book that nails baseball but is about much more.

Danny is wicked gifted when it comes to baseball--he can knock baseballs out of the park, and his pitching maxes out the meter at the local fair even when he was smashed. But he couldn't throw anything but wild pitches the tryouts at his prep school, and not even he can understand why.

His number one theory, though, is that things would be different if his dad were still around. Not just baseball, either. If his dad hadn't left, then maybe Danny wouldn't be stuck feeling stupid when his relatives in National City tell jokes in Spanish. (Danny's mom, who's white, can't help him out in that department.) The official word is that Danny's dad took off to Ensenada, Mexico, but it starts looking like there's more to the story than that as Danny spends the summer with his dad's family in National City, a mostly Latino pocket of greater San Diego.

But the eventual revelation regarding Danny's dad is much less important than Danny figuring out how to be himself, a task made a little bit easier with the jokey, easy-going crew his cousin Sofia hangs with. Danny's best friend turns out to be Uno, the same half-black, half-Mexican kid who welcomed Danny to the neighborhood by busting his face at the beginning of the summer. Things are good--but they're also ugly, the way things are in real life. What matters is that Danny starts finding his footing in that real life, and baseball takes its place as one bad-ass game that helps him bring things into focus without beating up on himself.

SAMMY AND JULIANA IN HOLLYWOOD (YA)

by Benjamin Alire Saenz

Sammy can't stop thinking about Juliana, even after thinking won't get him anywhere with her. Even though he can never get the girl that he wants, he's got lots going for him--and lots stacked against him. There's nothing gimmicky here, just the hurt of growing up and seeing your neighborhood for what it is, working the difficult balance between achieving dreams and remembering where home is.

Saenz nails the hopes and hurts of one generation of Latinos in a gritty barrio of Las Cruces, New Mexico. Adult and teen readers alike won't soon forget Sammy, Juliana, or their Hollywood.

THIRTEEN REASONS WHY by Jay Asher (YA)

This page-turner of a concept book definitely had me hooked--I mean, who doesn't want to find out what a girl who killed herself has to say on the seven tapes (two sides each) that she mailed out right before she did it?

We listen along with her classmate and crush Clay, who visits all the places that feature in her audio-tour account of experiences that just turned out to be too much for her.

This book has a balance of guy and girl issues, so it should be appealing to both genders. The structure of the book--we only know Clay for the night, for example, and the author of the tapes is, for obvious reasons, done with her development--keeps us from seeing the characters change much. But all in all, a solid book worth recommending.

Fans of books like What Happened to Cass McBride? might like this title.