Author:   Martínez, Víctor
Title:   El loro en el horno
Publisher:  Noguer y Caralt Editores    Publication Date:  c1996
Pages:   190
Paper price: $10.95    ISBN:  84-279-3238 3
Type: Fiction      Grade level(s): 7-12
Translation notes:
Original title:   Parrot in the oven
Translator: Amalia Bermejo

Reviewer:  Adrian Barrientos, San José Public Library
Translation rating:  satisfactory
Translated in Castilian, this book seems to be aimed at Spanish (European) readers rather than Latin American or U.S. Hispanic readers. In this translation, personal pronouns such as “vosotros” and “vos” are used in this Mexican-American novel. The translation is adequate, but I recommend that students/readers with a good foundation in Spanish grammatical skills should be able to handle this book.
Comments:
In this novel, Manny Hernandez, a Mexican-American teenage boy is the “parrot in the oven,” which describes an ignorant person who doesn’t know where he/she is at in this world. Manny confronts his life by fully trusting others and being naïve about the realities of living in a world of poverty, racial and class discrimination, peer pressure, and family problems. Going through some growing pains of liking a girl and being rejected by her and the disappointment of trying to join a gang in order to belong, he learns his lesson: that his family, with all their problems, is the best part of his life.