Seventh-grader Trino Olivares likes video games a lot more than he likes books. In fact, he doesn't have much use for most "school types". But when Rosca, an older teen with a vicious streak, invites Trino to start hanging out with his crowd -- and maybe make some quick money, too -- the younger boy doesn't know what to think. With little help from any adults, it's up to Trino to decide which choices will impress his friends -- and which choices are the best for Trino. A dramatic story about the difficult problems that children today face -- often with little guidance -- and the sometimes deadly consequences that can result. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Gr. 6^-9. Run or die, seventh-grader Trino thinks when he sees rat-faced Rosca and some other eighth-graders beating up the neighborhood convenience store owner, and they see him. Desperate, he ducks inside a dark bookshop, which he briefly considers robbing before some "school types," including the lovely Lisana, show up, interested in an upcoming poetry reading by a Latino poet who writes about the barrio. Although Trino and Lisana go to the same school, their lives seem worlds apart. Living in a Texas trailer park with his working mother, three younger stepbrothers, and freeloading drunk of an uncle, Trino hates his life and, frustrated, is drawn by Rosca's offer to hang out and maybe make some quick cash, which leads to tragedy. Although the story's pat last line reads like a heavy-handed, middle-school equivalent of riding off into the sunset, overall, this is a dramatic and realistic contemporary novel, in the tradition of Frank Bonham's Durango Street (1965) and Walter Dean Myers' Scorpions (1988), about a Latino boy struggling to grow into manhood and somehow make the right choices in the absence of adult guidance or even his own understanding of the serious consequences. --Annie Ayres From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.