Customer Reviews

Trino's Choice

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Trino's Choice, by Diane Gonzales Bertrand, is a story about a young boy named Trino. Trino is in the 7th grade and lives in a trailer park and is struggling through his adolescent stages while facing many problems that will force him to choose between right and wrong.

The author catches the reader's attention is several different ways. Suspense, questioning, and love are just some of those ways. However the reader needs to relate to Trino's life and the poor, trailer park life. If the reader hasn't been able to relate, this book gives the reader a good idea of how many adolescent teens live, and the problems they face.

Overall, this book was at best mediocre. It lacked a major attention getter and was slow on getting a point across. However, Trino's Choice did show the reader how some teens really live and how life is not always as pleasant as it is portrayed.

This book is an excellent read for young adults. It deals with the themes of person vs. person and person vs. self. This novel focuses on how Trino views his life and why he feels the way he does. He struggles with entering manhood with no guidance from a male role model and deciding whether to hang out with a school-type crowd or a rough crowd. Trino is a character that many children of this age level can identify with. He faces realistic conflicts between himself, friends, enemies and family members that young adults might be facing in their schools or at home. The author begins the book by Trino running away from someone who wants to kill him. This grabs the reader's attention because you don't know why he is trying to hide and who he is hiding from. The author draws her readers in and makes them want to know what is going to happen to Trino next. The Spanish dialogue that is incorporated into the text gives the reader a more realistic view of the novel because all the characters in this book are Latino. Trino is definitely a dynamic character because he experiences major changes in his life such as dealing with the death of a close friend, entering a new relationship with a girl, and entering manhood. This novel is highly recommended for teenagers because it focuses on issues that they are concerned about and can experience at this age.

The book Trino's Choice is a great book to read for children aged 12 and above. The story is centered on the main character Trino Olivares. Trino's family is facing serious financial problems and they are barely getting by on a daily basis. Trino's circumstances have forced him to grow earlier than his age and share his family's responsibility. His life gets worse after he witnesses Rosca and his small gang beat Mr. Epifaño, the owner of the neighborhood grocery store. He runs for his life when he meets Lisana, a fellow student. Trino is pushed in a situation where he has to decide between keeping his old friends who hung out with dangerous kids or being friends with Lisana and her group. Trino agrees not to tell the cops about Rosca's is crime. Rosca offers him money to join his gang. He is faced with with a difficult decision because his mother recently lost her job and the family needs the money, Trino considers the option. He must choose between taking the job Rosca has offered or staying away from trouble. On his way to meet Rosca about his new job, Trino witnesses another murder; his friend Zipper was shot.

There are some very important messages conveyed in this book, such as choosing between right and wrong, independance, issues related to identity, peer pressure, love, loneliness, and family problems. This book helps all children to learn and understand the complexity of taking decisions and the thought process required in making a choice. The language of the book will appeal to young readers as well as older ones.

This book teaches the reader that not all decisions should be based on the need for money and sometimes one has to go through a lot of trouble while doing the ethical thing. What will be Trino's choice? Read to find out.

I thought this was a great book. It adequately portrays the struggles some junior high students face every day. I like the fact that the main character's life wasn't an easy one.

Trino Olivares is a latino boy who has decisions to make... Should he be one of the tough guys in the neighborhood like Rosca or should he be one of the "School Types" like the pretty Lisana? To complicate matters Trino is living with his mother and three brothers who are just barely scraping by. The coming of manhood and the decisions one makes is a very important theme in many stories. Diane Gonzales Bertrand does a good job of mixing this theme with elements of the Latino American heritage mixed in. For a rainy afternoon or evening read Trino's Choice is not a bad choice at all...

It's been a long time since I've been in seventh grade, and I've never lived in the barrio, but I was with Trino all the way as he struggled with the colliding forces in his world--his empty stomach, his mother's dead end job, his dead father and "pest" little brothers who want more than he can give them, friends who want to fit in places that he's trying to escape and a beautiful young girl who loves poetry. Like THE COLOR OF WORDS, this book illustrates all the richness of life in a family of color and the power of writing, specifically poetry here, to help a person realease his words into choices. As a mother, a writer, a poet and former seventh grader I salute Ms. Bertrand and look forward to more work from her.

I read this book in 8th grade English with my students. My 8th graders are Latino and come from low-income environments, much like the main character Trino. Although the book has many masculine elements such as fighting, flaring tempers, and pride, it also has feminine aspects thanks to Trino's love interest, Lisana. My students are able to relate to characters in the story, who speak and act like they do.

I have a real gripe with the number of mistakes/typos in this book. It's hard to believe that this is a professionally edited piece of writing. Chapter 12 spells vacuum incorrectly AND uses the noun confidant when the adjective confident is what's needed. Even my students, who consistently score far below basic on their state English assessment, noticed the omission of punctuation and some of the spelling errors. A corrected edition is badly needed.