The author uses a lot of details in his narrative to create very vivid imagry of the settings in the book. Here is an example when Linc was on the bus going back to the Mission in chapter 5:
The bus rumbled from the slick comercial streetsof the suburbs to the litter-blown barrio of Lincoln's childhood. When he first boarded the bus, the few passengers, almost all of them retired people with carts for Saturday shopping, spoke English. But after twenty stops, after trim houses gave way to apartment buildings and poorly kept muffler and tire shops, the bus filled with brown faced raza. English gave way to singsong Spanish. Almost every woman had a child.
The imagery in the paragraph makes you feel as though you are on the bus with him
ReplyDeleteNearly every sentence in the book contains vivid details like the passage Richard pointed out. Lincoln doesn't just put on his sweater; he puts it on backward, feels the label tickle his chin, and doesn't bother to fix it. Lincoln's mom doesn't just wear slippers; her feet are "smothered in the rabbit slippers" Lincoln gave her. The man in the second-hand store doesn't just have bad teeth, his teeth are "stained and broken like jagged pieces of pottery." Gary Soto manages to bring every passage alive with details.
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