Rina’s Family Secret is the fourth novel in Gloria Velásquez’s Roosevelt High School series, which features a multiracial group of teenaged students who must individually face social and cultural issues (such as violence, sexuality, and prejudice) inescapable among young adults today.
Readers of the series will recognize the heroine Rina, a Puerto Rican student, as a character in previous books. In this installment of the series, Velásquez shows us the terrible pain and sadness one young woman must confront when she witnesses her stepfather beating her mother so violently that she must be hospitalized. When several days later her mother allows the abusive stepfather to return home, Rina explodes with anger, taking her younger brother and sister to their grandmother’s house. Rina’s Family Secret portrays, with realism and compassion, one young adult’s experience with domestic violence and her attempts to keep it a secret from her friends.
“Informative and believable enough to aid readers in similar situations and well-written enough to entertain and enlist the compassion of those who aren’t.”—Kirkus Reviews
“The author does a nice job of giving readers a window into the culture and providing some positive role models.”—Booklist on Maya’s Divided World
“Velasquez has written an engaging story that will help teens, gay and straight, to better understand the consequences of homophobia.”—Booklist on Tommy Stands Alone
GLORIA VELÁSQUEZ is an award-winning writer of poetry and fiction. She is the author of two poetry collections, I Used to Be a Superwoman (1997) and Xicana on the Run (2006), and the Roosevelt High School Series: Tommy Stands Tall (2013), Rudy’s Memory Walk (2009), Tyrone’s Betrayal (2006), Teen Angel (2003), Ankiza (2000), Rina’s Family Secret (1998), Maya’s Divided World (1995), Tommy Stands Alone (1995), and Juanita Fights the School Board (1994), all from Piñata Books. Velásquez is currently a professor in the Modern Languages and Literatures Department at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California.
Learn more at gloriavelasquez.com.
ATOS Interest Level: Middle Grade
Category: Young Adult
ATOS English: 5.1
Accelerated Reader Quiz #: 35008
