Agent: Stefanie Von Borstel, Full Circle Literary. A rowdy reminder that people are at their best when they aren’t forced into neat, tidy boxes. The relationships between children and parents are handled especially well: Malú chafes at her mother’s traditionalism while idolizing her friend Joe’s mother, a cafe owner who represents a merging of Mexican and punk cultures in a way that impresses Malú. (It also reclaims the slur “coconut,” which one of Malú’s classmates calls her.) Pérez’s debut is as exuberant as its heroine, who discovers that there’s real overlap between her Mexican heritage and the punk ethos she so admires.

“I’m just your weird, unladylike, sloppy-Spanish-speaking, half-Mexican kid.” Malú takes solace in punk music and in creating handmade zines, which appear throughout she also begins to make friends, forming a band-the Co-Co’s-that blends punk and Mexican music. “Admit it, Mom,” Malú says during one of their squabbles. Roller Girl meets School of Rock in this middle grade novel about identity, friendship, and riot-grrrl power by librarian and debut author Celia C. After María Luisa O’Neill-Morales-Malú for short-and her divorced mother move from Florida to Chicago, the 12-year-old struggles with having her music-loving father so far away and with living up to a mother she has nicknamed SuperMexican. Prez is the author of The First Rule of Punk, a 2018 Pura Belpr Author Honor Book Strange Birds, a 2020 Rise: A Feminist Book Project List Selection and Tumble, which received six starred reviews and is an NPR More about Celia C.

The first rule of punk by celia c pérez