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Overview
MAYA'S DIVIDED WORLD is the second installment in Gloria Velasquez's Roosevelt High School Series of fictional narratives dealing with the pressures and mysteries of young adult life. The highly-regarded series takes place in a high school with a multicultural student body and explores the problems of growing up in today's world.In Maya's Divided World, the well ordered and productive life that Maya has been able to accomplish during her high school years receives a sudden jolt, and everything seems to come undone when her parents announce their impending divorce. Her mother's traditional family almost disowns her when they hear the bad news, but their surprise and dismay is nothing compared to the depression and loss experienced by Maya, who had no idea that her parents were growing apart.
In her confusion, Maya abandons her friends for a newer, rougher set, and generally turns her back on all of the positive values, aspirations and accomplishments that once meant so much to her. The reaction of Maya's friends and family to her disorientation makes for engrossing, enriching reading.
When a seventeen-year-old Mexican American girl starts getting into trouble as a reaction to her parents' divorce, she is helped by a psychologist who has problems of her own.
Synopsis
MAYA'S DIVIDED WORLD is the second installment in Gloria Velasquez's Roosevelt High School Series of fictional narratives dealing with the pressures and mysteries of young adult life. The highly-regarded series takes place in a high school with a multicultural student body and explores the problems of growing up in today's world.
In Maya's Divided World, the well ordered and productive life that Maya has been able to accomplish during her high school years receives a sudden jolt, and everything seems to come undone when her parents announce their impending divorce. Her mother's traditional family almost disowns her when they hear the bad news, but their surprise and dismay is nothing compared to the depression and loss experienced by Maya, who had no idea that her parents were growing apart.
In her confusion, Maya abandons her friends for a newer, rougher set, and generally turns her back on all of the positive values, aspirations and accomplishments that once meant so much to her. The reaction of Maya's friends and family to her disorientation makes for engrossing, enriching reading.
School Library Journal
Gr 6-9In this second installment set at Roosevelt High School, readers again meet Maya Gonzales, who is now a junior. The teen's perfect family life is shattered by her parent's divorce. Her father moves to San Francisco and Maya and her mother spend a miserable month with relatives in New Mexico. Then, back in school in Laguna, CA, the girl begins to drive her old friends away and takes up with a new, rough crowd. Ms. Martinez, the psychologist introduced in Juanita Fights the School Board (Piata, 1994), again helps solve a young person's problems. As in that book, Velsquez uses the device of alternating narrative voices, which may confuse young people who are reading below level. The language is too ``nice and prim'' for contemporary teens, and Maya's reactions to events seem mild considering the changes she's going through. The mother's inability to see what is happening is not believable considering the amount of time the author spends trying to convince readers that the woman is super-intelligent. All in all, the characters do not come alive and the solutions are too pat. The concept for this series (stories about multicultural students in a contemporary high school) is great and is sorely needed, but more vitality needs to be put into the books if they are going to survive.Kenneth E. Kowen, E.L. Furr Senior High School, Houston, TX