Stef Soto, Taco Queen

For my third blog book I used http://www.abbythelibrarian.com/ and found "Stef Soto, Taco Queen" Jennifer Torres. The book is about a 7th grade girl named Stef Soto whose father owns a taco truck called Tia Perla. Stef's parents are first generation immigrants and Stef often has to help them as an interpreter as they speak very little English. In the story Stef is incredibly embarrassed by her fathers taco truck, especially when he brings it to pick her up from school. Stef is called the "Taco Queen" by her classmates and struggles to fit in. Stef's parents are also very protective and hesitant to let her have her freedom adding to her struggle to fit in and be a kid. However the main issue changes from Stef's struggle to fit in to her father being at risk of losing his business completely. The city passes new laws on food trucks that threaten to put the truck out of business. When her family's livelihood is threatened Stef ultimately embraces her culture and steps up to help her father's business. The thing that I enjoyed the most about this book was the writing style that Torres uses. The text is extremely descriptive especially when describing the food that Stef's father makes. You can really imagine what it would all be like thanks to the incredibly descriptive passages detailing his cooking. The other thing that I really liked about the writing style of this book is how Spanish words are seamlessly incorporated into the text adding a little extra to the authentic feel of the text. I always think its really cool when I see authors do this in their writing as I think its great to let the reader get a little bit of exposure to something that may not be natural to them or that they are unfamiliar with. I think its also really great how Stef decides to embrace her culture rather that assimilating at the end of the book, I think that this example is something we don't see enough of in literature and I think its good to let the reader know that it's ok to be different.