Gary Soto,
Help Wanted
Harcourt, new in paperback 2007; first published 2005

Ages 12 +

Mexican-American Gary Soto mines emotional material acquired growing up in a Fresno, California, barrio for his young adult books. His short story collection, Help Wanted, while vividly specific in its place details, also gets inside the universal mind of young adolescents.

Whether grieving the loss of a mother, or more often abandonment by a father, his characters are both growing up too fast and stuck in a netherworld of insecurity. Their amusing and disarming façades fail to hide their tenderhearted suffering and sensitivity. Soto is a master at conjuring these vulnerable young people.

Michael’s first paintball experience is a painfully expensive rite of passage. Carolina finds solace in indignant letters to Miss Manners about her uncouth friends and family. Javier can’t believe his classmate’s farfetched stories of Napa vineyards and New Mexico ranches - until she shows up just overhead, yelling at him through a bullhorn from her dad’s helicopter. Richard’s attempt to do a good deed for an old lady leads him into an encounter with her lazy grandson, the school tough. After various misadventures, two boys who think of themselves as chimps take an inner tube to the canal and drift away to what they dream will be Animal Planet.

Soto is a poet as well as a storyteller and he captures the dreams of his characters with acute poignance. His stories often close on a hauntingly lyrical note. “So we paddled our inner tube”, the chimps’ adventures end. “The current was slow, but we were getting there all the same by the shiny light on a dark and cold canal.” Soto’s compassion for his characters and his personal humanity make him an inspiring role model for youthful Hispanic writer aspirants: but all teens will be heartened by his warm, respectful, and humorous depiction of their lives.

Charlotte Richardson
September 2007