The Education of Margot Sanchez by Lilliam Rivera

This book was a great "discovering yourself" kind of book. It held great messages within it and had a great overall message of making sure you stay who you are and you don't change who you are for other people. This is an important concept for K-12 students to understand because of course, this is stuff they deal with on a daily. In school, you have the popular group along with all of the other groups and the totem pole of popularity. It is always the worst for the girls because of the passive aggressiveness, the gossip, and just bullying in general. This book would be a great read for teenage girls to maybe give them a second thought as to what they are doing in school and if they are truly being themselves.
The topic of urbanization is throughout the entire book but not the main theme. Rivera did a great job at showing the domino effect urbanization has on a small, locally-owned store versus a large superstore. I enjoyed that insight into this particular idea in this book. I am from a small town and every year I notice it growing more and more because more people are moving there. First, the high school was expanded and now housing is expanding. Currently, there are new apartment structures under construction which are awesome to see actually since there weren't any before. With more people comes change, unfortunately, all of the change is not always for the best. We are losing our only bowling alley because the owners just don't have the money to keep it running. The bowling alley is our only place of fun or activity for all ages. They have bowling leagues from ages 10-100. They have a special olympics bowling program to be fully inclusive, and they have a small arcade room for kids to just hang out in. That is not the only small business we have lost, we have lost hair salons, nail salons, mom and pop grocery stores, and we lost Rosaurs too. People are trying their hardest to come together and open a new shop here and there in the abandoned buildings, but it's becoming harder. Urbanization can be a good thing, but at the same time, it can have many consequences.
Also, Rivera did a great job with the multi-cultural aspect of the book. This book was not only centered around a Hispanic-American main character but also embraced the culture and environment they were living in. She did a great job with using the language throughout the book by including Spanish. I enjoyed the multi-cultural aspect of the book because of it diving into the culture and language of the family.
I'm not sure if I would personally teach this book in a classroom, but I might suggest it to people to read.