Gary Soto writes that when he was five “what I knew best was at ground level.” In this lively collection of short essays, Soto takes his reader to a ground level perspective, recreating in vivid detail the sights, sounds, smells, and textures he knew growing up in his Fresno, California neighborhood. The “things” of his boyhood tie it all together: his Buddha “splotched with gold,” the taps of his shoes and the “engines of sparks that lived beneath my soles,” his worn tennies smelling of “summer grass,asphalt, the moist sock breathing the defeat of baseball.” The child’s world is made up of small things–small very important things.A respected poet and an innovator of the short essay form, Soto offers nearly snapshot-like glances of moments unique in form yet universal in content.
