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Summary: It was a great book!!!
Review: Parrot in the Oven was a great book because it goes through obstacles that you go through in your life.It also tells about a boy that his father was an alcoholic and made the family go through hard times.His father would tell him that he was a parrot in the oven because there was a mexican parrot that complained because it was hot not nowing he was in a an oven.Parrot in the Oven is a great book because it talks about a kid that goes through different changes in his life.
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Summary: Its the kind of book once you start reading you cant stop
Review: Parrot in the oven is a book that I really enjoyed and that I would recommend to everyone. I enjoyed this book because it talks about real life situations what teenagers go through when they dont feel like they fit in and it also talks about how parents are and how they treat you. I think that if I ever get a chance to read this book again I would read it because Im sure that I will catch things I didnt the first time. Its a great book.
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Summary: It was a captivating book.
Review: Parrot in the Oven is a book tahat I have enjoyed reading. The way Manny expresses himself makes you feel like he's talking to you. I was disappointed on how the ended.I wish that the ending could of been more exciting. When I finished reading the book I asked myslef okay so what happens next? Did Manny stay in the gang or not? I recommend this book to those people who are trying to find themselves just like how Manny was seachering for himself. I rate this book a 9 everyone should get a chance to read it either at school or just for fun.
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Summary: "Parrot in the Oven" is an authentic coming-of-age story.
Review: In his father's eyes, Manuel Hernandez is a "Parrot in the Oven," but more out of innocence and trust than the proverbial Mexican parrot, who complains of the heat in the shade, not recognizing it is sitting in an oven. Victor Martinez' novel of barrio boyhood in Fresno, California portrays Manny's loss of innocence and painful growth into adulthood. Although Martinez uses common Spanish expressions throughout the book, he claims he is not writing Chicano literature. The setting for the story may be a barrio, but setting alone does not define genre. (Herman Hesse's Siddhartha is not "Indian" literature!) Coming of age is a universal theme; nevertheless, young adults of Mexican parentage are particularly drawn to Parrot, because the book rings so true to their own experience. Martinez is foremost a poet, and the poet's eye and ear are everywhere evident in the language of the story. Also unforgettable about this first novel (really a series of first person short stories), is Martinez' insight into a developing psyche. Besides recounting and interpreting new experiences, Manny revisits and revises former perceptions, values and beliefs. The tone is often depressing: the insufferable heat of California's Central Valley; the gabachos racist treatment of Mexican immigrants; the poverty which precludes many opportunities and creates hardships; the destructive acts of the gang members-the vatos locos. Even his family is dysfunctional: a binging, violent father; an alcoholic older brother; a pregnant sister who dangerously miscarries; and a mother who keeps cleaning, thinking the house would someday "disappear in one great sparkle, and she'd be free." One senses that Manny will survive the brutality, not without suffering, but because of some indefatigable inner direction, and a supportive mother, who, like Sisyphus, keeps pushing on, just because that's what you do.
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Summary: Award Information
Review: Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida was awarded the 1996 National Book Award for Young People's Literature
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Summary: It's part of the experiences in growing up....
Review: This book will bring you the happiness, the drama, family problems, and it's part of how you were when you grow up.
It describes the struggle within a family. The alcohol abuse and teenage pregnancy. Victor Martinez's experiences will reflect the family problems that most of us had faced.
I would recommend this book to everyone because it's great, excite and you can see the pictures as you read along. It's remind me of my childhood and many problems that I have with these experiences. When I was reading this book, I didn't want to stop because there so much details that reflect my childhood and at my teenager age. Read it and find out for yourself.
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Summary: Sharing it with my students next
Review: I can't hardly wait to share this book with my 13-14 year old students, most of whom are Mexican-American. I hope they will be turned on by the rich language and realistic characters, and I expect we will have great discussions about the never-ending list of issues that the author lays out. I feel his use of metaphors, and his way of honoring cultural figures of speech (such as in the title) is one of the ways this book stands out from the rest. I am so grateful to have found such a good text as this, one that I will be confident with as I share it with my students. Teachers: read it!
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Summary: Oven birds
Review: It's hard to review a book that fairly reeks of excellent prose. When you encounter a really GOOD writer, the temptation is to read the pretty words and pay little to no attention to the plot. Victor Martinez fits this category perfectly. Reading, "Parrot in the Oven" is difficult if only because the descriptions in the story are pitch perfect every time. I found myself so continually overwhelmed by the lush characters and interesting metaphors that I would completely forget to pay attention to the narrative and plot. Fortunately, in the case of this particular book, they were perfectly up to snuff.
The tale follows the life and realistic adventures of Mexican-American Manuel Hernandez. Manuel's a good kid. He has a slacker older brother, an older sister that flirts with danger, and a baby sibling that doesn't understand the ways of the world just yet. His father is unemployed leaving him regularly drunk and belligerent. His mother, not quite up to facing the problems surrounding her, stays by his side despite the effects of his actions on the kids. But mostly this is Manny's story. It's a look at a sometimes painful adolescence and the world of classism and racism in which everyone lives. That and it's a beautiful read.
I'll give you a taste of what I'm talking about. For example, after doing painful yard work with his brother the book reads, "When we stopped, finally, the sun was prickling like a hot rash on the back of my neck, and a piece of lava was wedged in my spine. My brother's face was swollen and burnished as a new penny". Another favorite passage of mine speaks of Manny's sister's friend. "She was in love with Nardo, but he didn't pay her any mind, mostly because blocks of fat sagged on her hips like a belt of thick Bibles". Descriptions like these don't appear out of thin air. It takes a skilled eye with a sense of humor to come up with such passages.
As I mentioned before, it would have been easy for Martinez to rest on his descriptive selections and pay little or no attention to character development and plot. Fortunately, this is not the case. While the plot is less a single tale of a boy becoming a man and more a series of significant vignettes in that boy's life, it still is a stunning piece of work. There are elements of painful realism in this tale, such as Manny's father attempting to shoot his mother in a drunken stupor and his mom defending that same husband to the police moments later. Characters act stupidly, nobly, or a little bit of both from time to time. The best way to determine how well you'll understand this story is to read the first chapter. If you finish it and don't feel that the author is monumentally gifted, you may as well move on and not bother with the rest of the book. Yet I'm confident when I say that people who don't recognize this book's beauty will be few and far between.
Great writing deserves a great audience. As it is, "Parrot in the Oven" is supposedly a teen novel. Don't let that discourage you (especially if you're a teen). The book is just as deeply satisfying and wonderfully written as any adult book out there today. After all, they say that if "Catcher in the Rye" was written today it would be published as a teen novel. If you're looking for a book that will wow you with its prose, this is the tale to purchase. A stunning and honest accomplishment.
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Summary: Parrot in the Oven: Mi vida by Victor Martinez
Review: Parrot in the Oven was reviewed as a luminous, humorous journal of a Mexican-American teens. This novel is divided into eleven short chapters where Victor narrates stories. It is written in a form that can be read by a wide range of ages, but the story is truly genuine. Its emphasis is on the life of Manuel Hernandez and his family struggling with problems such as a racism, poverty, and violence. Fourteen-year-old Manuel, called "Manny", has an older brother, Bernardo, often referred to as "Nardo", an older sister, Magda, and a younger sister Pedi. The Hernandez family continuously avoids people such as the Garcia's family, who are almost always doing something no good. Manuel's father can't maintain a job, like his son Bernardo. His father spends the majority of his free time at Rico's Pool Hall drinking and getting angry just to return to his home, occasionally resulting in offensive actions and we can see this in chapter 2 "Rico's Pool Hal."
Manuel's mother tries so hard to preserve a clean, and socially adequate home, but her constant arguments with her husband, as well as Magda's behavior for lack of respect and dependability, manage to maintain her tension level high, and the contemplation of true joy unthinkable. Manuel wants to be valued, but what he in truth wants is to be loved, particularly by a girl like in chapter 9, " Dying of Love".
In chapter 10 "A Test of Courage" said, "Just thinking about telling a girl I liked her clamped the muscles on my chest and made my lungs pull hard to catch a breath." sooner or later, Manuel gave up the initiative that he would ever be "nice" to young girls and Manny decides to join a gang to see if he is permitted to kiss a girl. He kisses the girl, but later on Manuel realizes that he doesn't really need to belong to a gang to kiss a girl, he can do that whenever he is allowed.
From the beginning to the end of the novel, we get to know Nardo as Manny's strong older brother who knows how to have a good time, but he doesn't essentially knows how to keep a job. Manny and Nardo are evidently unlike, and Manny rarely points these out. At the end we can see in chapter 11 "Going Home" that Manuel realized that he had the whole time a real home. He sits in his house, watching his sisters sleep on the sofa and he knows, for the first time, that this is where he is supposed to be, at home not his house but his home with his family.
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Summary: Review of Parrot in the Oven
Review: Parrot in the Oven was a good book to read. It was a growing up tale of a young Mexican boy going through many different situations. Manny the main charater in the book was talking about his life and the things he went through. Manny talks about his experiences through his childhood. It was a good read because it was a book that you could relate to. This book deals with some of the situations many Mexican kids go through in the United States. Manny talks about what he should be doing with his life and why he should do it. Manny is a young boy that dose not have too much confedence, but then starts to gain it up in the book. He understands what kind of person he should be in life, because he knows what other kind of person he could be and he dose not like it.
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