![]() ![]() First-novelist Roybal's smooth narrative and captivating characters will keep readers turning the pages. Like Caroline Cooney's Whatever Happened to Janie?, this eye-opening and atmospheric story shows the vacillating loyalties and deep-rooted anger of a child caught between families. His muddled emotions are convincingly conveyed, as is his gradual acceptance of the jarring changes in his life. Cow-punchers and urbanites alike will sympathize with Billy's struggle to adjust, his loneliness and his frustration at being misunderstood. ![]() Meanwhile, his cowboy garb is ridiculed at school and his new-found Hispanic friends don't meet the Campbells' approval. Her first novel, Billy, was chosen as an ALA Best Book for Young Adults and and ALA Recommended Book for Reluctant Young Readers. ![]() ![]() She has always worked with children and teenagers and has helped run a youth wilderness camp in Pecos. He is anguished when, his true identity discovered, he is sent back to the family who ``didn't care enough to come find him.'' Relearning the rules of his inflexible legal father, Dave Campbell, causes more than a few problems for the self-sufficient teen. Laura Roybal was born in Des Moines, Iowa, and lives in Pecos, New Mexico. But five rugged years with ``Dad,'' Guillermo Santiago Melendez, in rural New Mexico have given the boy a solid sense of himself as Billy Melendez. When Will Campbell is kidnapped by his natural father, a rodeo rider, all the 10-year-old can think about is returning to his adoptive home in Iowa. ![]()
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