Rating: 
Summary: Enjoyable!
Review: "The House on Mango Street" by Sandra Cisneros is a marvelous book. The story is written about Cisneros' childhood memories. She tells the readers about her childhood in short stories. They are rich in detail and have a great deal of figurative language and good vocabulary. The short stories tell of a young Chicana's family, friends, and neighbors and enable the reader to see the young girl growing up and maturing. If you are looking for a good book to read, I strongly suggest "The House on Mango Street." The "House on Mango Street" has a minimal plot, but the pure simplicity of this book is what makes it so powerful. It is about a family, which is not rich, but tries to provide what they consider to be the best for the family. Regardless how hard the parents try, their children are unhappy with what they have. Esperanza is a member of this family. She has many dreams. She has dreams of having a beautiful house with trees and a yard. At the beginning of the book her family moves into the house on Mango Street. The house, while in poor condition, provides the family with more space and more independence than they have ever had. The rented house allows them to dream of someday having a house of their own. The book follows her and a group of her friends and neighbors as they confront issues of sexuality, domestic violence, death, creativity, friendship, and racism. Her friends marry, move away, suffer abuse, and have children. Her family sees deaths and struggles with poverty. I found "The House on Mango Street" enjoyable. I applaud its underlying principle that we can and should strive to be more than our sometimes cruel and unemotional society would like to think we are. Although many have criticized the author for her grammar and usage mistakes, they were put there to illustrate the characters, not to show how sloppy she can be in proofreading her work. This is a well-constructed book, one that is sure to be around for many generations. "The House on Mango Street" was a very enjoyable book. I would recommend it to anyone. The book has many useful stories to which almost anyone can relate. It teaches very valuable lessons. Esperanza realizes that while she may leave Mango Street someday, she will always be obligated to come back to help those who are not able to leave. This is a very strong message that many people need to hear. I enjoyed reading "The House on Mango Street." I hope that many other people enjoy the book as much as I did.
Rating:
Summary: The synopsis
Review: This is a review of the book I read. The title of the book is called "House on Mango Street" This book tells different kind of interesting and sometimes frightening tales of a little girls point of view. A little girl name Esparanza is the main character in this book. She is a one brave soul. Esparanza was a little girl. In English Esparanza means hope and in Spanish it means sadness. Esparanza was born during the Chinese year of horse. It is a bad luck for a girl to be born on the year of horse, because the Chinese didn't want their women strong. This could have been the Chinese's myth or probably a lie, but Esparanza didn't care much. Her (Esparanza) name was passed on to her after her great-grandmother. Her great-grandmother was a wild person. She was so wild she wouldn't marry. Until her great-grandfather threw a sack over her head and carried her off. She was forced to marry him. Esparanza didn't really like her name. Esparanza had six members in her family-Mama, Papa, Carlos, Kiki, and her sister Nenny including her. She moved a lot over the past years. Every time she would move the family gotten bigger. She met a girl name Cathy. She lives upstairs next to Joe and Baby-grabber. She was a cat freak. She had cats on her bed in her kitchen and every where around the house. When you would go into her house you could imagine that you were in cat heaven so many to count, so many different kinds. Esparanza made some new friends when she got to the neighborhood of Mango Street. Their name was Lucy and her sister Rachel. When they asked for her name she was afraid to tell them, because she though if she told them her name they would have laughed at her, but after telling them her name they didn't really mind what her name was. She was glade her name didn't turn out to be a laughter. They asked her if she wanted a bike and if she gave them 5dollars they would be her friends and get a bike that they could all ride on with. It would be Lucy's for a day and Rachel and than to Esparanza. She agreed to pitch in 5dollars for the bike. She went to her savings and got 3dollars, and borrowed from Nenny the rest. Esparanza made new friends and got a new bike she could ride around with. Esparanza's first job was at the place called the Peter Pan Photo Finishers on North Broadway. Esparanza even went to get her social security number for her new job. Aunt Lala introduced her to doing this job. Aunt Lala told her to lie about her age. Maybe because of the fact that she knew that Esparanza was young to work at the Peter Pan Photo Finishers. Esparanza did what she was told. The first day she went to work she wore a blue dress that made her look older and borrowed money for lunch and some money for the bus fare. She did what she was told by her boss. She tried to do what the other workers around her were doing and when they sat down she would too. The ladies around her would laugh at her, because she did exactly what they were doing. When the lunchtime came, Esparanza wouldn't go into the company lunchroom, because she knew no one there. She would go into the lunchroom before anyone else and eat a fast meal and start back what she was doing. The synopsis is some examples in the book. I hope I made all the readers out in the world of dreams and imagination could get a hand of this book and see the exciting adventures that Esparanza has. I would recommend this book to any adult or child. The book is kind of short, but once you open the pages you can't stop.
Rating:
Summary: The House on Mango Street Review
Review: The House on Mango Street A critical review The House on Mango Street was a very educating book for all ages to read. The grammar isn't hard and it can relate to a lot of people. It had a lot of good strengths and weaknesses throughout the book. This book has been taught to grade school children, high school students, and college students though out the world. It has given a lot of inspiration to people reading it. They can relate to it in many ways. It has been made into Spanish and other languages for other countries to read. The House on Mango Street was a book about a girl named Esperanza who lives on a street named Mango Street. The book has short stories about Esperanza and how one year was on Mango Street. Some stories are about her name and what it means and others are about her friends or people she might that day. These stories are very interesting because they are about a girl that is my age and I can relate to a lot of these stories about her life. In a way the book is like Esperanza's journal and all of the stories are entries each day that she lives. Some days she's happy and others she hates her life. It very well depicktates a young girl's life. It sounds like she has written all of this and she is taking you through it. This girl Esperanza goes through many things that could be hard for her to deal with. People in the neighborhood die, her friends move away, and she lives with a poor family. She learns to live with that and is able to move on. She always dreams about a better house and describes it with detail every time. The house would be red with tress all around and a white fence surrounding it. Some of the experiences that she goes through are tough and I don't think I would be able to deal with. Esperanza is a strong girl that knows she can do anything with her life. She has a strong heart and she cares for many other people throughout the book. In the book Esperanza fells like she always has to watch over her little sister. When the book progresses she learns to deal with her sister and starts to like her. Children all over the world need to learn that. Some of the strengths are when Esperanza deals with friendship and that can be hard for someone to deal with at that age. A major strength is when she tells about her name and what it means to her. She inherited the name from her grandmother but she doesn't want to inherit her grandmother's life. She was told that all her grandmother did was sit in a window and look and the kids and the cars, but never do anything else with her time. Esperanza never wants to be like that and that can be a strength for her. A weakness can be how her sister follows her around and makes her look like an idiot to all of her friends. Soon that weakness can turn into a strength for Esperanza. She goes though many difficult times and many children can learn from that. That is why everyone should read The House on Mango Street because people learn from other people.
Rating: 
Summary: A reader from New England, October 10, 2000
Review: When my teacher handed me the book, The House on Mango Street, I thought it was going to be great . I did not think this because of the cover but because of my parents. They had told me that the book was very good. To me the book was very confusing in different vignettes. It was amusing at some parts like in the vignette Our Good Day. It was also very well written and interesting how she wrote the book. I like how she makes you think and that everything she says has something hidden behind it. I also enjoyed the metaphors. There were good things and bad things about the book, that is why I gave it a three stars.
Rating: 
Summary: What's All the Hype About?
Review: For several years now, I couldn't swing the proverbial dead hedgehog without knocking out someone (uaually an English instuctor) whose devotion to this book was nothing short of fanatical. Consequently, I dutifully read the book, hoping that it might be appropriate for my freshman composition classes. If any of my students are reading this, don't worry, I would not subject you to this tedious, pretentious pseudo-poetic novella. Rest assured, though, thou Cisneros acolytes, I "get it," but I do not want it. Ms. Cisneros' style is all she has to offer in this hackneyed theme of growing up as a poor, marginalized immigrant. So many others, such as Frank McCourt, Hanif Kureshi, V.S. Naipaul, and even Mario Puzo and have written in brilliant linguistic style on the coming-of-age ethnic dilemma, and they have all done it with more substance and lucidity than the ostensible kidspeak style window dressing that Cisneros chose to hide her lack of verve and narrative appeal. On the personal side, as a woman of Hispanic extraction, I shudder to think that Cisneros has become a literary model for part of my culture. But ah, yes! What about that Latina slot in the reading list? I suggest Laura Esquivel's *Like Water For Chocolate* for its splendid magic realism, genuinely sympathetic -- yet naturally flawed -- characters, and intensity of action. Now, that's *style*! I read most of the students' reviews of *The House On Mango Street* on amazon.com and empathize with the majority. They "get it," too and see right through it. Unfortunately, too many teachers go with whatever is trendy and underestimate their students' insights. I can assure you after many years of teaching, students can smell a turkey (no matter how well dressed) from the next area code, and best of all, they are unaffected by the barrages of critical hype to which we so often fall prey.
Rating:
Summary: My first book about Latinas in English is The House on Mango
Review: The House on Mango Street, is an elegant literary piece, somewhere between fiction and poetry. Sandra Cisneros doesn't just construct characters, but writes about real people that she has observed in her lifetime. This book is about original culture, different population, and hard times. The author tells us that are important for her: feminism, love, oppression, and religion. In my opinion, The house on Mango Street is very educative.
Rating:
Summary: Actually, it doesn't even deserve one star.
Review: This book was horrible. It had no plot line. None. It's just a jumbled up bunch of stories. Also, there are no quotation marks, which makes it rather difficult to understand. Since the main character (Esperenza) doesn't really have a good description, it's difficult to understand her. But I guess the book does deserve that one star; it'll keep me warm in the winter when I burn every last page.
Rating:
Summary: Predictable
Review: Yes, this book discussed issues like sexism and racism, but it didn't offer any insight or anything new about these issues. It is horribly predictable, and, though the strange writing style certainly is noticable, the content itself is not out of the norm. This book has been required reading in many schools for the same reason there is affirmative action--Political Correctness. Otherwise, there's no reason to read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Predictable
Review: Yes, this book discussed issues like sexism and racism, but it didn't offer any insight or anything new about these issues. This book has been required reading in many schools for the same reason there is affirmative action--Political Correctness. Otherwise, there's no reason to read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Touching and full of power
Review: Sandra Cisnero's novel, The House on Mango Street, is a nice work made up of various vignettes that span through many childhood memories. As a Mexican-American, I was able to identify so much with this short and charming work. It was easy to read and very rich in poetry. I have heard many people complain about the way she decided to write. Poets are allowed to break the rules in order to work the magic of their art...read this with an open mind and heart and you won't be disappointed.
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