Hey 13!

by Gary Soto

Being thirteen is happy, sad, humiliating, surprising, wonderful, awful, exciting, boring, in other words fill of ups and downs. The thirteen-year-olds in Gary Soto's thirteen stories experience all this and more.

In one story, a girl's world is turned upside down when she visits a college campus where she expects to find a rarefied atmosphere of intellectual pursuit, only to meet a tour guide who is tattooed, overly pierced, hungover, and not at all focused on academics. In another, two girls test the attraction of their new bodies by flirting with boys at a mall and then find themselves in an uncomfortable and somewhat frightening situation.

The stories in this book are about family relationships, friendships, self-worth, and questions of integrity. 

Genres: Short Stories, Middle Grade, Realistic Fiction

256 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2011

About the author

Gary Soto is the author of eleven poetry collections for adults, most notably New and Selected Poems, a 1995 finalist for both the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the National Book Award. His poems have appeared in many literary magazines, including Ploughshares, Michigan Quarterly, Poetry International, and Poetry, which has honored him with the Bess Hokin Prize and the Levinson Award and by featuring him in the interview series Poets in Person. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. For ITVS, he produced the film “The Pool Party,” which received the 1993 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Film Excellence. In 1997, because of his advocacy for reading, he was featured as NBC’s Person-of-the-Week. In 1999, he received the Literature Award from the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, the Author-Illustrator Civil Rights Award from the National Education Association, and the PEN Center West Book Award for Petty Crimes. He divides his time between Berkeley, California and his hometown of Fresno.

Reviews

[Katie · Rating 1 out of 5]

painful and embarrassing in its attempts at coolness.

[寿理 宮本 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am admittedly probably judging this more harshly than I might, since the copy I have was donated to a free library sans jacket, with the title and author badly scrawled on the cover... the BACK cover... oops.

So I was not prepared for this to be a collection of individual short stories, vs. a longer story or even a collection of stories about related characters like with Wayside School. That's normally not a bad thing, necessarily, but I found after the first three that I didn't really LIKE any of them. Or, Saul seems okay, but his story is about his father getting rid of all of their animals, just because they're moving, and that includes their old, arthritic dog, and that's just depressing (how did they even get a dog in the first place?).

I've only read the first three but found myself uninterested in the rest, just because those three didn't capture my interest, and I don't know if I want to jump into ten MORE stories that are okay at best:

1. The Campus Tour
Emma is part of a group of honor students chosen to get a tour of a college campus, but she spends most of the tour silently judging the people she meets. She only sort of changes her mind at the end, after meeting and practicing with a tai chi instructor. I get that part of an ultra-conservative upbringing is being resistant to new things, but... college is all ABOUT new things...?

I don't know. I have a lot of bad experiences with closed-mindedness, so even though there's a foothold in the door for Emma, I just don't like this much, especially with her growth being limited to a single chapter. I was open to the idea of following her on a longer journey, but nope! Isn't happening... :/

2. Twin Stars
Teri and Luz are self-absorbed friends who plan to be HUGE STARS but don't actually know how to do the work it takes to get there: they (Luz, rather) come up with song titles but no lyrics, and they (Luz, again) plan to make ordinary things valuable on account of their future fame (chewed-on pencil).

Similar bad experiences with self-absorbed people to like them much, myself.

3. A Simple Plan
Mentioned above.

4. Musical Lives
*lost interest by here and forgot what even the first paragraph was about*

I don't know. I assume younger readers—particularly 13-year-olds—might be able to identify with the characters better, or feel what they're going through. I think I'm at a point in my life where short stories that aren't fables just don't hold my interest unless they're a little more filled out than these are. I've probably read too many disjointed standalone story collections to really get into any others unless they're by a REALLY good author/compiled by a good editor.

[Coe]

Rating: 1.5

This was so bad. So so bad. This book tries too hard to be cool. It's set in 2011-ish yet they said things were "funky", were in love with the Jonas Brothers, called their cell phones "their cells" and so many more cringe-worthy things. None of the titles made any sense.

The first story was almost funny, it was so bad; a girl gets a dose of what college students/college is like. She's horrified by tattoos, girls having armpit hair (GASP HOW SCANDALOUS), and teachers not looking professional.

The last story, god I hated it, it was incredibly stupid and made zero sense. And I mean grammatical sense.

And it seemed like the author forgot these kids are only 13 or younger. "Celebrities" had a few creepy lines about the boys they meet.

And the writing...I've read drabbles better than this.

Lucky drank from a puddle, with his feet in the puddle.

Prose at its finest.

Also, what was with all these boys shoving their hands down someone else's pant pockets?

...slapping Freddie once on the side of head and rummaging through his pockets.

The stringy kid shoved his hands in Ethan's pockets.

But that didn't stop Ryan from grabbing Matt from behind and pushing his hand into his pocket.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this collection, the popular author provides 13 short stories dealing with issues that face anyone on the edge of 13. Teen readers will see themselves in several of the stories, trying to navigate the confusing waters of first romances, of a college tour that reveals more than the teacher expected, and the craze for fame and celebrity. I loved "A Simple Plan" in which Saul's father insists that he get rid of the family dog. Although he does so reluctantly, leading the animal a good distance from their home, he has second thoughts. I also liked "Dirty Talk" a great deal, as fast-talking, profane Tiffany realizes that her friend Beatrice may not be the person she thought she was. After a visit to her house while she is babysitting her niece who spouts obscenities, Tiffany resolves to use beautiful words and not ugly words in the future. There are lessons in each of these stories as well as appealing language and word choice, always the case in Soto's writing.

[Diane Ferbrache · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title refers to the 13 stories all by Gary Soto about teens who are 13 years old. The stories vary widely from silly teen girls who obsess over rock stars and spend time at the mall to teen boys who "borrow" scooters on a Sunday morning to a girl's first look at what college is really like to a boy forced to give up his dog when the family is moving. The stories are sometimes funny or even silly and sometimes touching and emotional. Although the variety is the appeal, it's also the downfall. Soto is at his best writing about Hispanic (immigrant) teen boys and those stories are the best and have the most impact on the reader. The silly girly stories are just that. One unfortunate thing though is the cover -- reminiscent of Tiger Beat magazine, it's probably going to appeal more to 13 year old girls than boys. But the stories are ideal for read-aloud in a middle school classroom and teen fans of Soto (boys and girls) will like the stories despite the cover.

[Shaniya · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked this book so much.I loved all the stories in it.My favorite one was
the first one.It was my favorite because she learned that everything or everyone cant be perfect.Pg.1
You would like this book if you like books with a mixture of stories.You would like this book because that is what it is.It is a mixture of 13 different stories in one book.
A challenge of this book was keeping track who was talking.For example someone might be talking twice like this:
Hey
What you doing.
The same person was talking and it is confusing.
One character from a story was Saul and he was forced by his father to give away his dog and abandon it.This story was very sad because he had to lose something he loved and cared about.

[Katie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I used to do some book reviews for teen books of the year, and this is one of the ones I got. I couldn't get past the first couple of page. Honestly the worst book I've ever read. The stories themselves could have been turned into at least decent ones. However, the lack of detail and character development left every story in the book severely lacking. The way it was written lead me to think that he wrote it as fast as he could just to make a quick buck. I've heard some of his other work is quite well done, but this one should not have even been published. Come on, Gary!

[Michelle Stimpson · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Hey 13!" is a collection of 13 stories about thirteen (or nearly 13)-year-olds. As with any collection of short stories, some stories are better than others, but there are a couple of stories that I liked really well and will use in my middle school classroom. Unfortunately, the best stories are at the end of the book and I fear some won't read past the weaker ones to get to the strong ones, so if you're interested, I recommend:

"Whose Bedroom Is This?"

"Romancing the Diary"

"Dirty Talk"

[Mary Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

This collection of thirteen stories about thirteen year old boys and girls revolves totally around the angst of being thirteen in today’s world. The majority of the tales related are quite self centered, but here and there a rough jewel gleams through. With the exception of one story they all take place in an urban setting and those usually on the struggling end of our current day’s economy.

[Cynthia Sherman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting stories about being 13. Readers will enjoy this very much.