Book+2

Eric Huber Sarah Peterson

**Book-**
__**Fade to Black**__ __ Esperanza Rising __

**Plot-**
**-Alejadro Crusan was attacked one morning by a kid from school, they smashed the windshield of his car.** **-There was a witness, Daria Bickell, she had told the cops that it was Clinton Cole who smashed Crusans windshield.** **-Then one day Clinton gets taken out of class by the cops, they take him to the princepals office to question him.** **-Alex is now spending time in the hospital with his face all bandaged up.** **-The most Alex gets for company is his parents or the nurse, Jennifer.** **-Clinton has admitted to the cops of throwing a rock through the Crusans window but he still doesn't admit to smashing the windshield.** **-When people ask Alex how he got HIV he tells them he got through a transfusion, but he only tells them that to hide the truth.** **-When the cops come in to question him he tells them that Clinton didn't do it and that it was someone else.** **-Then he told the cops he wants to have a personal conversation with Clinton.** **-As he is talking to Clint, Alex knows that he didn't do so he kind of toys with him for awhile and at the end of the conversation Alex holds out his hand to sahke Clintons hand, he hesitates a little then shakes it.** **-A couple of days later Alex goes back to school and the cops have found the guy who smashed his windshield and that guy is know in jail.** **-At this point and time Alex has told his parents that he got the HIV from haveing sex with a girl at a frat partyand not from a transfusion.** **-When he gets to school all day he has not seen Jennifer or her car, as he gets out to his car he see's her walking to her and he asks her if she needs a ride and when she says yes he helps her into the car and when there both in he tells her how he got the HIV because he really likes her and wants to be with her.**

Esperanza believed her life would be wonderful forever. She would always live on her family's ranch in Mexico. She would always have fancy dresses and a beautiful home filled with servants. Papa and Abuelita would always be with her. But a sudden tragedy shatters her world and forces Esperanza and Mama to flee to California, where they settle in a camp for Mexican farm workers. Esperanza isn't ready for the hard labor, financial struggles brought on by the Great Depression, and lack of acceptance she now faces. When Mama gets sick, and a strike for better working conditions threatens to uproot their new life, Esperanza must find a way to rise above her difficult citcumstances--because Mama's life and her own depend on it.

**Theme-**
**Coming of Age**

**Genre-**
**Fiction**

** "I make out shapes, like the IV pole, television, a window with flowers on the windowsill."- hospital **
===** "...she picked through the black wood, hoping to find something to salvage. She sat on an adobe block near what used to be the front door, and looked over Papa's rose garden. Flower-less stems were covered in soot. ...Esperanza surveyed the surviving victims: the twisted forms of wrought-iron chairs, unharmed cast-iron skillets, and the mortars and pestles form the kitchen that were made from lava rock and refused to burn. Then she saw the remains of the trunk that used to sit at the foot of her bed, the metal straps still intact. She stood up and hurried toward it, hoping for //un milagro,// a miracle. She looked closely, but all that remained were black cinders." (pg.43+44) **===

** -- Esperanzas house was destroyed in a fire Just a few days after her father died. **
===** "On one side of the highway, acres of grapevines stretched out in soldiered rows and swallowed up the arbors. on the other side, fields and fields of dark green cotton plants became a sea of milk-white puffs. this was not a gently rolling landscape like Aguascalientes. ...the land was unbroken by even a hillock." (pg.94+95) **===

** "There is a short cop and a tall skinny cop and the short one looks familiar." **
"He's a spic or a latin as my mother would say." "If I look into his beady blue eyes, maybe I'll know what to do." "Mr. Eutsey is the biggest black guy I've ever seen, maybe six-five, with a voice like James Earl Jones, who played Darth Vader in the Star Wars movies."

"Esperanza, on the other hand, wore a light silk dress that stopped above her summer boots, and no hat. On top of her head a wide satin ribbon was tied in a big bow, the tails trailing in her long black hair." --Esperanza (pg.5) Before she moved to the US. "...Mama, tall and elegant, her hair in the usual briaded wreath that crowned her head." --Mama (pg.5) Before she moved to the US. "...Papa, barely taller than Mama, his graying mustache twisted up at the sides." --Papa (pg.5) Before she moved to the US. "...a girl in a blue silk dress and a boy with his hair slicked down..." --Esperanza and Miguel (pg.251) Remembering back to how things used to be.

**Quotes that show theme (3)-**
**"You really do not know what it is like to have other people deciding stuff for me."** **"I've grown up fast and I'm asking you to trust me to decide this one thing."**

"He who falls today may rise tomorrow. The rich person is richerw hen he becomes poor, than the poor person when he becomes rich." --Mexican Proverbs "Wait a little while and the fruit will fall into your hand. You must be patient, Esperanza." (pg.2) Things will get better if you can wait. "Do not ever be afraid to start over." (pg. 253) Sometimes things can be better if you start over.