Sizzle

by Lee McClain

Overview

Sizzle...or burn? Linda Delgado has the best nose in all of Arizona—for cooking, that is. She may be only fourteen, but Linda loves making fresh Mexican food with her aunt Elba and blogging about food with her best friend, Julia. But after Aunt Elba suffers a ministroke, Linda is catapulted across the country and into a whole new life. In Pittsburgh, living with bossy Aunt Pat and her seven kids, Linda feels completely out of place. Worst of all, Aunt Pat is a local celebrity with her own TV show, Cooking from Cans—and she won’t let Linda in the kitchen. Linda might go loco if she doesn’t get some fresh food—like now. Then Linda finally gets her chance to sizzle—alongside cute-guy-with-a-secret Dino Moretti (who even smells delicious) and her jealous cousin Chloe. Linda’s new life is about to heat up fast.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781477816301
Publisher:	Amazon Publishing
Publication date:	08/27/2013
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.60(d)
Lexile:	650L (what's this?)
Age Range:	11 - 14 Years

About the Author

Lee McClain teaches writing and literature at Seton Hill University in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. She loves southwestern cuisine and the Polish and Italian specialties of her Pittsburgh neighbors...but she was raised on canned vegetables and still cooks green bean casserole for family gatherings. When she’s not teaching or writing, Lee enjoys running marathons at a very slow pace and traveling with her husband and their ten-year-old daughter. She is also the author of three other novels for young adult readers: My Loco Life, My Abnormal Life, and My Alternate Life.

Editorial Reviews

An unexpected family illness forces a 14-year-old Latina foodie to leave her Arizona home for a large Pennsylvania household.

When her Aunt Elba suddenly gets sick and closes the family's Mexican restaurant, Linda Delgado is sent to live with her "Aunt" Pat and her husband in Pittsburgh. The couple already has seven children, a mixture of biological, adopted and foster. Pat helps to support the family through a local television show dedicated to cooking from canned foods, a practice that contradicts Linda's training using fresh ingredients. Besides being uprooted from her Native American best friend Julia and her quiet life with her aunt, Linda can't even find solace in her cooking, as the kitchen is Pat's domain. The couple's 14-year-old daughter Chloe resents Linda's presence, especially as the two have to share a bedroom in the cramped house. At school, Linda finds herself competing against Chloe for the attentions of Dino Moretti, while at home she tries to stomach Pat's cooking and help an orphaned Latino foster child deal with his grief. McClain breaks Linda's first-person narrative chapters with posts from the teen and others on a food website, and she almost sidetracks the story with an unfortunate subplot involving a rival cooking show.

A charming heroine and a happy, if slightly unrealistic, ending make this stand out above the usual fare. (Fiction. 12 & up)

Kirkus Reviews