Author Information
Gary Soto's Latest Book

Newest Release

  • Bibliography:
    52 Books
  • First Book:
    January 1985
  • Latest Book:
    June 2023
  • Author Rating:
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Multi-Author Series List

The American Girls Collection

Marisol (Dec-2004)

American Girl Today

Marisol (Dec-2004)

Book List in Order: 52 titles



    • / General Fiction
    • Buy Buy

    In prose that is so beautiful it is poetry, Gary Soto depicts the world of growing up and going somewhere through the dust and heat of Fresno's industrial side and beyond. This is the story of a boy's coming-of-age in the barrio -- attending parochia...



    • / General Fiction
    • Buy Buy

    In this unique collection of short stories, the small events of daily life reveal big themes--love and friendship, youth and growing up, success and failure. Calling on his own experiences of growing up in California's Central Valley, poet Gary Soto ...



  • Gary Soto writes that when he was five "what I knew best was at ground level." In this lively collection of short essays, Soto takes his reader to a ground-level perspective, resreating in vivid detail the sights, sounds, smells, and textures he knew...



  • Sometimes to find out who you are...you have to travel half a world away. Lincoln Mendoza doesn't know jack about Japan. They make good cars, right? And somewhere there are old samurai men sitting cross-legged before bowls of incense, their gis st...



  • A trailblazing anthology of fiction by Mexican-Americans living in the United States, Pieces of the Heart contains 15 original stories, many previously unpublished, by a host of exceptional authors, including new writers like Ana Castillo and Danny R...



  • Rudy Herrera is surprised and excited when he gets an invitation to a pool party. It's from Tiffany Perez, the richest and most popular girl in school. Rudy's grandmother, "El Shorty," thinks he is going off to shoot pool. His sister, Estela,...



  • The author of A Summer Life shares memories of his childhood, such as the hideous jacket he was forced to wear for three years, his grandmother's advising him to be a barber, and other gems. Reissue....



  • This modern classic celebrates the tradition of tamales and family bonding at Christmas.Christmas Eve started out so perfectly for Maria. Snow had fallen and the streets glittered. Maria's favorite cousins were coming over and she got to help make th...








    • / General Fiction
    • Buy Buy

    Boy was he ever wrong. When Hector's mother suggests that he and his amigo Mando get out of East L.A. for the weekend and see some of the world, he's thinking Paris. So he's a little disappointed when they end up in Fresno, sleeping on a lumpy cou...



  • For fans of Gary Soto and Matt de la Peña comes a tale of a contemporary Mexican-American family with a "spunky and imaginative heroine" (Publishers Weekly).Miata Ramirez is scared and upset. The skirt she brought to show off at school is gone. She ...





  • Coming of age in the shadow of the Vietnam War, Jesse, a young Mexican American, and his older brother, Abel, work long hours in the fields in order to save money for college in the hope that education will help them escape poverty. Reprint....



  • Ninth grader Rudy has a date with eleventh grader Patricia. Now he has to come up with the money, the poise, and the conversation to carry it off. This one-act play, by turns heartwarming and heart-wrenching, follows Rudy from his desperate search f...



  • For Eddie there isn’t much to do in his rundown neighborhood but eat, sleep, watch out for drive-bys, and just try to get through each day. His father, two uncles, and his best friend are all dead, and it’s a struggle not to end up the same way. ...





  • It's almost Cinco de Mayo, and Ricky's class is going to put on a play to celebrate the festive Mexican holiday. When asked to choose his costume, Ricky picks a big, bushy mustache, just like his dad's. He's tired of everyone telling him he looks lik...



  • Meet Manuel, a young man who wears hand-me-downs from his older brothers until he finally gets a brand-new pair of shoes. And José Luis, who watches the vet bills rise after he buys a sick rooster to save it from becoming someone’s dinner. And Alm...






  • Who would bring the door, la puerta, to a picnic instead of the pig, el puerco? An old man who's great at gardening but lousy at listening to his wife! "In the universal tradition of the wise-fool story, this gentle disaster tale is funny and affecti...



  • Being a flower girl has never been so exciting.

    Meet Maya, Isabel's flower girl, as she describes in vivid detail the exciting wedding day. Maya introduces us to Danny, the ring bearer; Aunt Marta, crying big tears; Uncle Trino, jump-starting ...



  • A hip, funny, Latino rendition of Grease, this play features three cool muchachos who come to the aid of Martin, a chicano nerd who loves a beautiful, popular girl, Ceci, from afar.With the help of his friends, Martin changes his miage and impresses ...



  • "I'm outta here! I got a future!" crows Roberto Silva when he is down-sized out of his job as a security guard at a bank in Oakland. But Roberto's future isn't the one he was looking forward to. This is the 1990s, and upward mobility in the city r...



  • Chato, the coolest cat in el barrio, loves to party--but not his best buddy, Novio Boy. Birthday parties always make him blue. "I'm from the pound," he tells Chato. "I don't know when I was born. I never knew my mami. I never even had a birthday part...



  • Powerful personal narratives by the renowned author of Living Up the Street. These small essays are not unlike Dutch paintings of the sixteenth century. They are clear and precisely rendered, and are either thematically domestic scenes or pedestrian ...



  • Rigo doesn't like being the youngest brother. He always has to wear his big brothers' hand-me-downs. Plus, his brothers-Hector, Manuel, and Carlos-always seem to lose buttons, rip holes, and wear the clothes out before they get to Rigo! But Rigo's lu...



  • For Fernie and his best friend, the fun begins when they are babies who crawl across the lawn towards each other, away from their parents' watchful eyes. And once they find each other, they are inseparable.Together, they grow to be the self-proclaime...



  • Silver Mendez, veteran Chicano poet, is always looking for a way to guarantee himself three square meals a day and a roof over his head. As this latest account of Silver's misadventures begins, our hero reaches for a typewriter on a high shelf. Wh...



  • In thirteen stories full of wit and energy, Gary Soto illuminates the ordinary lives of young people. Meet Angel, who would rather fork over twenty bucks than have photos of his naked body plastered all over school; Philip, who discovers he has a "me...






  • SOME GAMES YOU LOSE NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU PLAY. Lincoln Mendoza is brown, not white. Nothing is going to change that. Sure, these days he lives in Sycamore, the mostly rich, mostly white suburbs, instead of the hard-knocks barrio where he grew...



  • You'd think a knife in the ribs would be the end of things, but for Chuy, that's when his life at last gets interesting. He finally sees that people love him, faces the consequences of his actions, finds in himself compassion and bravery . . . and ev...



  • Meet Marisol Luna, a girl who was born to dance. the upsettting news that her family is moving to Chicago suburbs is made worse when Marisol learns that her new neighborhood doesn't have a dance studio. That means no tap, no jazz, no ballet folklo'r...



  • We met these spirited best friends in Fearless Fernie, and now they're taking on the world! From boxing a kangaroo in Australia to craving Mexican food in Taiwan, or riding a runaway camel in Egypt and eating cheese as holey and smelly as their socks...



  • It all starts when Marisa picks up the wrong cell phone. When she returns it to Rene, she feels curiously drawn to him. But Marisa and Rene aren't exactly a match made in heaven. For one thing, Marisa is a chola; she's a lot of girl, and she's not as...



  • Few writers capture the everyday moments of life like Gary Soto. In direct and vivid poems, he draws from his own youth in California's Central Valley to portray the joys and sorrows of young people. His writing focuses on Latino characters, yet spea...



  • Teresa was so excited when her grandpa gave her a fantastic little carrito for her birthday. Everyone admired it when she rode down the sidewalk and it won Best Car at the playground hands down. Over time, though, she stops taking care of it and i...



  • With real wit and heart, Gary Soto takes readers into the lives of young people in ten funny, heartbreaking tales. Meet Carolina, who writes to Miss Manners for help not just with etiquette but with bigger messes in her life; Javier, who knows th...



  • !Chihuahua! what are two low-riding cats to do when they sign up for a cruise and end up on a ship full of dogs? Chato and Novio boy try to have fun, but they’re miserable watching endless games of bark at the Moon. plus, the dogs get sick from all...








  • On his thirteenth birthday, Ronnie woke up feeling like a chimp -- all long armed, big eared, and gangly. He's been muddling through each gawky day since. Now his best friend, Joey, has turned thirteen, too -- and after Joey humiliates himself in fro...



  • Chato can''t believe his luck. Not only is he the coolest low-riding cat in East L.A., but his brand-new neighbors are the plumpest, juciest, tastiest-looking family of mice to move into the barrio in a long time. So Chato and his best friend, Novio ...



  • A poignant, humorous collection of short stories by acclaimed author Gary Soto. What do Gaby Lopez, Michael Robles, and Cynthia Rodriguez have in common? These three kids join other teens and tweens in Gary Soto's short story collection in which t...



  • What happens when the dad you don t know suddenly invades your life? Gabe Mendoza is off to the library when his long-absent father appears and looks to be homeless. His father wants to re-establish a relationship, but thirteen-year-old Gabe is he...



  • A stellar collection from Newbery medalists and bestselling authors written to benefit Darfuri refugees With contributions from some of the best talent writing for children today, What You Wish For is a compelling collection of affecting, inspirin...



  • Being thirteen is happy, sad, humiliating, surprising, wonderful, awful, exciting, boring, in other words fill of ups and downs. The thirteen-year-olds in Gary Soto's thirteen stories experience all this and more. In one story, a girl's world is t...



  • At Little League, Luis is catching fly balls, stealing bases, and hitting like a champ. But there is a problem: he thinks he's getting good luck from the snacks he samples at the supermarket before every game. Then one day his mom goes directly to th...



  • A poignant, humorous collection by acclaimed poet Gary SotoThe fleeting emotions of teenagers, as changeable as the weather, ring true in these emotionally resonant poems. Told from the point of view of both boys and girls, narrators of various ethni...



  • Hector and his amigo Mando are looking for adventure as they hit the road on a leisurely bike trip from their East LA neighborhood to the beach in Santa Monica during summer vacation.

    They have just set out when the fun begins, as Hector li...



  • Catch election fever when fifth grader Miata Ramirez runs for president against school prankster, Rudy Herrera. Miata and her running mate, Ana, mean business. But the boys are loud and get attention. With time running out, the girls try to think of ...






  • Jason Rodriguez is a twelve-year-old who never had much luck until he wins $3,700 in the lottery and becomes an Instant Winner! Jason can't believe he's won the lottery and decides he will use the money to get his crazy Uncle Mike out of jail. That's...



  • Thirteen-year-old Gabe Mendoza is headed to the public library when he hears a voice call, “Son.” Gabe sizes up an approaching vagrant. “It’s me, your dad.”Dad? Couldn’t be. This man looks homeless -- is homeless. He’s hauling a suitcas...



  • A sweetly humorous middle grade novel packed with action, basketball, and a dash of magical realism about friendship and family, first crushes, and belonging, from acclaimed author Gary Soto.Thirteen-year-old Jordan Mendoza has a huge crush on his cl...


Award-Winning Books by Gary Soto

Chato and the Party Animals
2002 Pura Belpre Award -- Illustrator
Chato's Kitchen
1996 Pura Belpre Award -- Illustrator
Jesse
2014 Phoenix Award -- Children's Literature
Petty Crimes
1999 PEN Literary Award -- Children/Young Adult
Snapshots from the Wedding
1998 Pura Belpre Award -- Illustrator


Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Gary Soto has published 52 books.

Gary Soto does not have a new book coming out soon. The latest book, Puppy Love, was published in June 2023.

The first book by Gary Soto, Living Up The Street, was published in January 1985.

No. Gary Soto does not write books in series.