Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Fifteen-year-old Rico Fuentes, who refers to himself as the "palest Cubano who ever existed on the planet," feels impelled by circumstances involving drugs, truancy and family to flee Harlem for Wisconsin; it's the 1960s and his good friend Roberto, a lottery winner, is attending college and has rented a farm nearby. Hijuelos, who won the Pulitzer Prize for The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (1989), explores issues of race, identity, prejudice and outsiderness in his affectionately written, sometimes raw teen debut. Smart, confused, a good-hearted bookworm from the ghetto who feels an affinity with Huck Finn and writes imaginative comic-book superhero stories, Rico ultimately comes to see that "where you are doesn't change who you are." In spite of several graphic scenes dealing with drugs and violence, this novel is very much geared to young adults; indeed, it sometimes seems as if the author is trying to pack in too much advice, making for a somewhat loose narrative. Even so, young readers will genuinely care about Rico and be carried along on his journey of discovery. (Historical fiction. 12 up) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Publishers Weekly
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Hijuelos, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, has said that his first YA novel is a novel he wished he'd read as a teen. His themes are classic--alienation, the search for identity--but his approach is pure Hijuelos: Cuban-American, musical and very, very funny. Rico Fuentes, his 15-year-old narrator, is a "dark dude" in late-'60s Harlem, a Cuban-American so light-skinned that, he says, he carries - 'get-jumped,' money 'cause I attracted both Latino and black takeoff artists who saw my white skin as a kind of flashing neon sign that said 'Rob me.' - His best buddy Jimmy, who illustrates Rico's "homegrown" comic-book stories about superheroes like "El Gato" and "the Latin Dagger," is becoming a junkie. Rico's mother pretends not to understand his English, blaming him for the childhood illness that put the family in debt. Kids get shot at school ("an incident involving gunplay," as the principal describes it) and his dad wants to send him to his uncle's military school in Florida.Rico, an outsider par excellence, is good at finding paths still further out. He's got Huckleberry Finn from literature as one type of guide and Gilberto from the neighborhood as another. Gilberto, "the big brother I never had," has won the lottery and used it toward tuition at Milton College in rural Wisconsin. Grabbing Jimmy, Rico lights out for Gilberto's place, in search of his freedom, like Huck and Jim. Hijuelos gives Rico months on a communal farm with hippies, a small-town girlfriend with a cop brother, and encounters with racists before his a-ha! moment ("Where you are doesn't change who you are"). Like Dorothy returning from Oz (an adventure also referenced here), the inevitability of the conclusion doesn't matter: it's the smooth, jazzy flow of the narration, the slides between Rico's rootlessness and the book's strong sense of place that count. Ages 12-up. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

*Starred Review* In his first novel for young adults, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (1987) proves himself to be a powerful, adept storyteller for teens. Rico, a Cuban American teen growing up in Harlem in the late 1960s, is tired of working extra jobs to help his family; of the chaos and tragedy at school, where students are so inured to violence that, when classes close after a shooting, they behave like it was suddenly a holiday ; of being hassled for his light skin and hair. When his parents threaten to send him to a military school in Florida, he runs away. Together with his best friend, Jimmy, who has just kicked a heroin habit, Rico hitchhikes to Wisconsin, where Gilberto, an older-brother figure from Harlem, has bought a farm that he shares with several hippie college students. In an unwavering, utterly believable voice, Rico details his midwestern year, in which he adjusts to rural life, falls in love, and pursues his comic-book-writing aspirations. Most of all, though, he searches for a sense of self, ultimately realizing that where you are doesn't change who you are. Frank, gritty, vibrant, and wholly absorbing, Rico's story will hold teens with its celebration of friendship and its fundamental questions about life purpose, family responsibility, and the profound ways that experience shapes identity.--Engberg, Gillian Copyright 2008 Booklist

School Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Gr 9 Up-Rico Fuentes, 15, hasn't had an easy life. He spent part of his childhood in a hospital, his mother blames him for her misery, his loving father is a drunk, and, because of his light Cuban skin, he's hassled by peers. With escalating problems at his 1960s New York City school and his friend Jimmy spiraling dangerously out of control because of drugs, Rico decides to run away, taking Jimmy with him. They head for Wisconsin and Gilberto, who's gone off to college and is living on a hippie farm. There, in the "land of milk and honey," Rico saves Jimmy's life and finds acceptance-by others first and, ultimately, of himself. The protracted narrative is by turns sentimental, humorous, and sad, but Hijuelos creates a memorable character who will resonate with readers wrestling with their own identity issues.-Terri Clark, Smokey Hill Library, Centennial, CO (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.