Broken Chain

Summary: In this short story a 7th grade boy named Alfonso is dealing with growing up poor while trying to navigate his way into a new image as an adolescent Chicano. Too poor to afford braces, Alfonso spends most of his time pressing on his front teeth and doing push-ups in his room in order to improve his image. When not trying to improve his image he rides around the neighborhood on his bike. One day Alfonso meets a nice girl and asks her to go for a bike ride the next day. However, a turn of events makes it exceedingly difficult to make it to the date. The reader is taken on a journey with Alfonso as he tries to solve his conflicts with himself and the world in which he lives.

CLD Students: This story is appropriate for all CLD students because it is engaging for students of all backgrounds as it touches on internal and external conflict. Along with conflict, vocabulary, plot, and identity can be taught with this text. The issues that the main character deals with in the story can be related to things students deal with every day as well. Students can discuss their personal accounts of conflict and compare and contrast those to the events in the story.

Related Materials/Resources:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0aZIwCDT1HvSkpuVmQ1ZnZ2elk

Google Doc with resources

Gary Soto Author Information:

http://www.garysoto.com/bio.html

http://www.notablebiographies.com/news/Sh-Z/Soto-Gary.html

http://www.umich.edu/~ac213/student_projects08/latlit/soto.html

Available Formats and Languages: Spanish, English, hardcover, paperback, kindle, also available in selected textbooks

Age Range: 6-8th grade

Book: "Baseball in April and Other Stories" by Gary Soto

ISBN: 13: 978-0152025670