When Enrique is five years old, his mother, Lourdes, too poor to feed her children, leaves Honduras to work in the United States. The move allows her to send money back home to Enrique so he can eat better and go to school past the third grade.Lourdes promises Enrique she will return quickly. But she struggles in America. Years pass. He begs for his mother to come back. Without her, he becomes lonely and troubled. When she calls, Lourdes tells him to be patient. Enrique despairs of ever seeing her again. After eleven years apart, he decides he will go find her.Enrique sets off alone from Tegucigalpa, with little more than a slip of paper bearing his mother's North Carolina telephone number. Without money, he will make the dangerous and illegal trek up the length of Mexico the only way he can – clinging to the sides and tops of freight trains.With gritty determination and a deep longing to be by his mother's side, Enrique travels through hostile, unknown worlds. Each step of the way through Mexico, he and other migrants, many of them children, are hunted like animals. Gangsters control the tops of the trains. Bandits rob and kill migrants up and down the tracks. Corrupt cops all along the route are out to fleece and deport them. To evade Mexican police and immigration authorities, they must jump onto and off the moving boxcars they call El Tren de la Muerte- The Train of Death. Enrique pushes forward using his wit, courage, and hope - and the kindness of strangers. It is an epic journey, one thousands of immigrant children make each year to find their mothers in the United States.Based on the Los Angeles Times newspaper series that won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for feature writing and another for feature photography, Enrique's Journey is the timeless story of families torn apart, the yearning to be together again, and a boy who will risk his life to find the mother he loves.

    Rodriguez spent time as an inmate of the California Youth Authority—a prison system for young lawbreakers. This book reflects on the happy and the miserable times of his childhood—growing up, maturing, and finally making a comfortable life for himself. Highly recommended reading for young adults, East Side Dreams has earned the distinctions of being named the "Best First Book of the Latino Literary Hall of Fame", and has been honored as one of 200 Best Teenage Books in the United States by the New York Public Library System.

    He anxiously awaits the hand that will set him free. Level 3 ? Up to 1000 words

    A sumptuous feast of a novel, it relates the bizarre history of the all-female De La Garza family. Tita, the youngest daughter of the house, has been forbidden to marry, condemned by Mexican tradition to look after her mother until she dies. But Tita falls in love with Pedro, and he is seduced by the magical food she cooks. In desperation, Pedro marries her sister Rosaura so that he can stay close to her, so that Tita and Pedro are forced to circle each other in unconsummated passion. Only a freakish chain of tragedies, bad luck and fate finally reunite them against all the odds.

    An inland expedition ends in disaster when the group is attacked by Indians.The Witness explores the relationship between existence and description, foreignness and cultural identity.Juan Jose Saer was born in Argentina in 1937 and is considered one of Argentina's leading writers of the post-Borges generation. He died in 2005.

    Time shifts from one consciousness to another in a hypnotic flow of dreams, desires, and memories, a world of ghosts dominated by the figure of Pedro Páramo - lover, overlord, murderer.Rulfo's extraordinary mix of sensory images, violent passions, and unfathomable mysteries has been a profound influence on a whole generation of Latin American writers, including Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Gabriel García Márquez. To read Pedro Páramo today is as overwhelming an experience as when it was first published in Mexico back in 1955.

    There Felipe meets her beautiful green-eyed niece, Aura. His passion for Aura and his gradual discovery of the true relationship between the young woman and her aunt propel the story to its extraordinary conclusion.

    This book features several enduring legends, which for the ease of comprehension, are told in both Spanish and English, on facing pages.

    Through the eyes of the ancient slave Ti-Noel, The Kingdom of This World records the destruction of the black regime--built on the same corruption and contempt for human life that brought down the French--in an orgy of voodoo, racial hatred, erotomania, and fantastic grandeurs of false elegance.

    In 1955, eight crew members of the destroyer Caldas, were swept into the Caribbean Sea. The sole survivor, Luis Alejandro Belasco, told the true version of the events to Marquez, causing great scandal at the time.

    Homer's epic poem, The Iliad is brought to life by Rosemary Sutcliff with the skill of a good storyteller, and with the dramatic and haunting illustrations of Alan Lee (Art Direction, The Lord of the Rings).The book was the winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal in 1993.

    The word is out in Spanish Harlem: Willy Bodega is king.  Need college tuition for your daughter?  Start-up funds for your fruit stand?  Bodega can help.  He gives everyone a leg up, in exchange only for loyalty--and a steady income from the drugs he pushes.Lyric, inspired, and darkly funny, this powerful debut novel brilliantly evokes the trial of Chino, a smart, promising young man to whom Bodega turns for a favor.  Chino is drawn to Bodega's street-smart idealism, but soon finds himself over his head, navigating an underworld of switchblade tempers, turncoat morality, and murder.

    Sections group tales together by theme or juxtapose variations of individual tales, inviting comparison and analysis across cultures and genres. An accessible section of critical selections provides a foundation for readers to analyze, debate, and interpret the tales for themselves. An expanded introduction by the editors looks at the history of folk and fairy tales and distinguishes between the genres, while revised introductions to individual sections provide more detailed history of particular tellers and tales, paying increased attention to the background and cultural origin of each tale. A selection of illustrations from editions of classic tales from the 19th to the 21st centuries is also included.

    With the help of David Tushingham, he has adapted Salman Rushdie's classic children's novel, Haroun and the Sea of Stories for the stage. Set in an exotic eastern landscape peopled by magicians and fantastic talking animals, Rushdie's novel inhabits the same imaginative space as Gulliver's Travels, Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz. Haroun sets out on an adventure to restore the poisoned source of the sea of stories. On the way he encounters many foes, intent on draining the sea of all its storytelling powers.

    When this woman is murdered and Camilo is accused of the homicide, the mystery takes on bizarre proportions. The gradual un­folding of the mystery involves the reader intellectually, but also holds him captive to the special interests of several narrators. And the unravel­ling and ultimate resolution of the mystery permit the reader to be gratified that his efforts at following the narrative carefully have finally been rewarded.