Chambers, Veronica

Carmen is turning fifteen and her friends Sarita, Alicia, Jamie, and Gaz plan to throw her a quinceanera, but when the group decides to join a reality show competition, Carmen feels like her party is becoming less important.

Alicia takes it upon herself to organize a massive celebration for Sarita's quinceanera and soon finds that the job is too overwhelming.

The author describes many aspects of jump rope including the role that jump rope played in her own life as a girl in East Harlem in the 1950s.

Separated from her best friend in Brooklyn, thirteen-year-old Marisol spends a year with her grandmother in Panama where she secretly searches for her real father.

Eagerly anticipating her Quincea?era, the fifteenth birthday celebration that will signify her adulthood, Marisol is troubled by a lack of money, her mother's new boyfriend, changes in her best friend, and the absence of the father she never knew.

Recounts the vibrant personalities and remarkable cultural movements that flourished in America's leading African-American community during the 1920s and 1930s.