Multicultural Poetry: Neighborhood Odes

As part of an attempt at expanding my basis of both poetry and multicultural literature, I've chosen Neighborhood Odes, by Gary Soto (1992, illustrated by David Diaz.)

The perspective/setting are a neighborhood of mostly latin@ children, so the experiences include learning to make tortillas and talking about la llorona. There is Spanish scattered around the poems and their titles, but the content isn't necessarily foreign to non-latin@ readers: everyone can connect to the stories Soto tells.

As an ESL teacher trainee, a book like this is hugely valuable to me.


-Nick