The strength of many of these nine stories about growing up Mexican American in southern Texas lies in the characters' relationships with family. Though there is a sameness to the voices and writing styles, the stories have a wide emotional range. Rice incorporates Spanish phrases gracefully: while they are not always translated, their meaning can usually be gleaned from context.

Crazy Loco collects nine stories rooted in everyday life in a small town in South Texas. Like the best short fiction, they reveal their deepest truths obliquely, in the details of small moments and gestures. In the title story, a boy names his dog Crazy Loco--a wonderful, casual illustration of the characters' constant bilingual shifts between cultures. There are family struggles too: in Her Other Son, a boy registers both the tensions and the deep rhythms of comfort and peace in his family. There are sexy scenes of first kisses and frightening moments with the border police. Sometimes the metaphors are too heavy; one links a bird's release to a girl's desire to leave her home for college. But Rice, author of Give the Pig a Chance (1996), blends humor and precise detail, creating believable, imperfect, complex characters that are at once rowdy, subversive, and devoted to family and tradition.

Gr 7 Up-Two great strengths of these stories are the pitch-perfect sense for the speech and thought patterns of teens and the vivid depiction of the daily lives of Mexican-Americans in Texas's Rio Grande Valley. One story focuses on two small-town boys trying to cope when their older and more sophisticated California cousins come to visit. Another is about the loving relationship between a girl and her great-aunt, a midwife who retires at age 85 after her grand-niece is born. Another tells of a teen who resents having to move in with his grandfather after his parents' divorce and having to adapt to the old man's ways. Rice highlights the details of these ordinary lives-including Spanish words and phrases as well as Catholic practices-while still revealing the universal patterns behind the cultural particularities. The strongest stories here-"Last Mass," "Her Other Son," and "Papa Lalo"- also display a firm control of narrative and dramatic unity, drawing readers on to emotionally satisfying but not predictable conclusions. In the weaker stories, the insights and the voice are still sharp, but the narratives are less compelling. Even so, this is a powerful collection that should enjoy a wide audience.-Coop Renner, Moreno Elementary School, El Paso, TX Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.