O. Henry Middle School

Author Visit! Rebecca Balcarcel visits O. Henryn Cafe -2:00 pm

The Other Half of Happy

 

by 
Rebecca Balcárcel (Goodreads Author)
 4.30  ·   Rating details ·  229 ratings  ·  84 reviews
12-year-old Quijana likes to say that she used to be Pangaea. Unsplit. Not half white or half Latina. But that was before her Guatemalan cousins moved to town and before her dad asked her to speak some Spanish. Now her continents are splitting apart. Let’s face it, when you’re named after Spain’s most famous loser, Don Quixote, you might make a secret escape plan. Join Quijana as she earns to make a tortilla, comes of age in the Guatemalan-American hyphen, and discovers her missing half.

Chronicle brings us poet Rebecca Balcárcel's middle grade novel about a biracial girl who's navigating between the Anglo and Guatemalan sides of her family, a burgeoning crush and a cool new friend, and trying to figure out what's going on with her little brother, who is becoming remote and hard to reach, all while trying to determine just who she is.