Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass

Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass

by Meg Medina

Piedad "Piddy" Sanchez was perfectly happy in her crappy apartment, living with her mother and aunt.  Things may have always been falling apart, but she knew her neighbors and she liked her school.

After the stairs crumble to pieces beneath her mother's feet, Piddy is forced to move a few blocks away to a better apartment, but now she must go to a horrible school.

Just weeks after starting at her new school, Piddy gets told that the school bully has set her sights on her and now Piddy's in danger.  It seems that Yaqui Delgado thinks Piddy's a stuck-up, wannabe white girl who shakes her assets at Yaqui's boyfriend.  It doesn't seem to matter that Piddy's never met Yaqui, never met Yaqui's boyfriend, and never tried to intentionally shake her assets at anyone.

So while Piddy's still trying to figure out her own identity, and that of her never-seen father, she must also dodge Yaqui and Yaqui's clique of very dangerous girls.

Can she find the strength to survive the school year when the meanest girl in school is after her?

Final thoughts: Interesting look into Latina school culture.  For years I've worked in schools with large Hispanic/Latino populations so this is actually familiar, though definitely more intimate viewing it from within the mind of the victim.  Having also been bullied in high school, this book brought back some very real emotions and memories that I really didn't need to remember.  Good book.  Good voice.  Maybe some translations for the occasional Spanish words that were in the story instead of just having the reader rely on context clues would have helped, but that's about it.

Rating: 4/5