Title: Parrot in the oven
Author: Martinez, Victor
Age range: 13 and older
Booktalk author: Susan Harloe
La vida is a whirlwind for Manuel Hernandez. His handsome brother Nardo has "flipped through more jobs than a thumb through a deck of cards", his recently unemployed father has "as much patience as you can drop on a toothpick", his sister Magda has a secret boyfriend, and his worried Mom bites her nails and looks at the sky " like the whole sky was the most marvelous sight she had ever seen." In the turbulent hotbed of his proud family, Manny has his own troubles.
Manny's Mom thinks he would do better at another school across town, where all the white kids go. His old history teacher agrees -- but when he offers Manny a ride home to the projects, Manny just wants to say thanks but no thanks. He knows the complications of having a teacher drive onto the projects: people hanging around will think it's something suspicious, something a snoop would do, and his mother will think it's someone coming from public housing to complain, and his father -- his father "had it in for white guys like Mr. Hart who had good jobs and dressed in white shirts and black ties... It didn't matter that, for whatever else one could say about him, Mr. Hart was an okay guy... what mattered to my dad was... that he'd be beholden to some white guy for giving his son a ride home. Letting Mr. Hart take me home was the worst acid I could have poured into his stomach."
And then there is the matter of girls... when smooth blonde Dorothy Giddens is forced by her father to invite him to her upcoming party, he knows it's a big mistake, and is bound equally by joy and terror at the thought of it. After the disaster of the party, he knows he's hopeless: "Just thinking about telling a girl I liked her clamped the muscles on my chest and made my lungs pull hard to catch my breath." One day his friend Frankie says he knows where Manny can get to know a girl real good, if he wants to. Then comes the test of Manny's courage.