Maya's Divided World (Roosevelt High School) (Roosevelt High School (Paperback))

Maya's Divided World (Roosevelt High School) (Roosevelt High School (Paperback))

Maya's well-ordered and productive highschool life receives an unwelcome jolt and begins to unravel when her parents announce their impending divorce. How Maya copes with this blow and the reaction of her friends and famiy make for engrossing reading. From School Library Journal Grade 6-9?In this second installment set at Roosevelt High School, readers again meet Maya Gonzales, who is now a junior. The teen's perfect family life is shattered by her parent's divorce. Her father moves to San Francisco and Maya and her mother spend a miserable month with relatives in New Mexico. Then, back in school in Laguna, CA, the girl begins to drive her old friends away and takes up with a new, rough crowd. Ms. Martinez, the psychologist introduced in Juanita Fights the School Board (Pi?ata, 1994), again helps solve a young person's problems. As in that book, Velasquez uses the device of alternating narrative voices, which may confuse young people who are reading below level. The language is too "nice and prim" for contemporary teens, and Maya's reactions to events seem mild considering the changes she's going through. The mother's inability to see what is happening is not believable considering the amount of time the author spends trying to convince readers that the woman is super-intelligent. All in all, the characters do not come alive and the solutions are too pat. The concept for this series (stories about multicultural students in a contemporary high school) is great and is sorely needed, but more vitality needs to be put into the books if they are going to survive.?Kenneth E. Kowen, E.L. Furr Senior High School, Houston, TXCopyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.