By René Saldaña Jr.
- ISBN: 978-1-55885-866-4
- Publication Date: May 31, 2018
- Bind: Trade Paperback
- Pages: 64 pages
Fifth-grade detective Mickey Rangel is back on the
case in this short, bilingual novel about what drives bullies.
Marco, the new boy in school, is small and “mean as a
skunk.” He has no fear. Mickey knows, because he saw the incident with Simón
Ortega, a football player who’s a head and a half taller than Marco. The short
boy is sly too—even though he started the fight, it’s Simón who ends up in the
principal’s office, in trouble for beating up a smaller kid!
Mickey plans to do the right thing and tell the
principal what he saw, but the next day Marco threatens him and everyone else
if they tell. Because of him, Simón has in-school suspension for two weeks and
is off the football team. “Imagine what I can do to you if you stick your fat
noses into my business.”
Unable to understand why Marco is so mean, Mickey is
even more dumbfounded when Bucho, the school’s resident bully, backs down from
the new, short kid. What drives a bully? Mickey wonders. Thus his newest
challenge: to turn a bully into a friend, or at the very least, a nicer person.
Mickey Rangel, kid detective extraordinaire, is on the case!
In the fifth novel of the Mickey Rangel Mystery
series, author and educator René Saldaña, Jr. crafts another entertaining book
for intermediate readers about something every school kid can relate to: mean
classmates who knock others down to feel better about themselves.
“In Mickey Rangel’s fifth mystery, like many kids his
age, the title character is faced with a new kid in class who is less than
welcoming. But how do you help someone who doesn’t want to change? It’s a solid
resource for younger kids to learn about how best to tackle a bully and how to
find your voice and speak up for not only yourself, but those around you. A
welcome return to Mickey’s primarily Latinx world.”—Kirkus Reviews
RENÉ SALDAÑA, JR. is the author of four books in the
Mickey Rangel Mystery series: A Mystery Bigger than Big / Un misterio más grande
que grandísimo (Piñata Books, 2016), The Mystery of the Mischievous Marker / El
misterio del malvado marcador (Piñata Books, 2013), The Lemon Tree Caper / La
intriga del limonero (Piñata Books, 2011) and The Case of the Pen Gone Missing
/ El caso de la pluma perdida (Piñata Books, 2009). His books for teens include
A Good Long Way (Piñata Books, 2010), The Whole Sky Full of Stars (Random
House, 2007) and The Jumping Tree (Delacorte, 2001). He lives in Lubbock,
Texas, wher e he teaches in the College of Education at Texas Tech University.
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