A Summer Life

by Gary Soto Narrated by Daniel Duque-Estrada

Overview

Gary Soto writes that when he was five “what I knew best was at ground level.” In this lively collection of short essays, Soto takes his listener to a ground-level perspective, recreating in vivid detail the sights, sounds, smells, and textures he knew growing up in his Fresno, California, neighborhood.

The “things” of his boyhood tie it all together: his Buddha “splotched with gold,” the taps of his shoes, and the “engines of sparks that lived beneath my soles,” his worn tennies smelling of “summer grass, asphalt, the moist sock breathing the defeat of baseball.” The child's world is made up of small things-small, very important things.

A respected poet and an innovator of the short essay form, Soto offers nearly snapshot-like glances of moments unique in form yet universal in content. Growing up Chicano and male, Soto gives us a rag-tag race through his neighborhood, speaking equally as well to the childhood experiences of us all.

Anyone who remembers the fifties or who knows anything about growing up in the fifties will relish Soto's rich poetic descriptions. Teachers and students of writing will relish Soto's rich poetic descriptions. Teachers and students of writing will also find inspiration in these tightly knit and highly imaginative stories. Soto offers much more than humorous and poignant recollections; he wraps each memory in a poetry that lingers pleasantly in the reader's mind.

A Blackstone Audio production.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Poet Soto ( The Tale of Sunlight ) here offers 39 brief essays about his years from age five to 17 in and around Fresno, Calif. In supple, evocative language he remembers quietly euphoric summer days spent in the shade of fruit trees, when the taps he fastened to his shoes--``kicking up the engine of sparks that lived beneath my soles''--were enough to keep him amused, and when an imaginary brake prevented the boy from speeding out of control. A favorite theme is childish fantasy, whether the rumor of a giant who ``lived nearby'' or a breeze that ``moved a hat-sized tumbleweed,'' and, without saying a word on the subject, Soto suggests the rich implications of imagination for the future writer. It is mostly his fondness for place that buoys memory up, with the sights, tastes and feelings of home and earth revealed in carefully chosen yet seemingly casual details: ``I ate like a squirrel with a burst of jaw motion''; ``Grandmother sipped coffee and tore jelly-red sweetness from a footprint-sized Danish.'' Soto the realist does not neglect his boyhood mischief, and his sly sense of humor is exercised throughout. (July)

From the Publisher

Deceptively simplistic and quietly powerful sketches from a gifted poet and storyteller.”—Booklist

“Soto the realist does not neglect his boyhood mischief, and his sly sense of humor is exercised throughout.”—Publishers Weekly

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169864250
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	07/01/2013
Edition description:	Unabridged
Age Range:	10 - 13 Years

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