The First Rule of Punk

Juvenile fiction 

     "Dad kept telling me not to worry.  That everything was going to be okay.  I really wanted to believe him.  But as I watched Dorothy's house fly up into the air and spin around in the twister I wasn't so sure"

     MaLu (Maria Louisa), protagonist of Celia C. Perez's The First Rule of Punk, is sure that Chicago will never feel like home.  She's moved half way across the country for two years.  When she returns she'll be in high school.  Her mother received an offer she couldn't pass up and wouldn't let her stay with her father.

     MaLu loves her father's music store, Spins & Needles which she considers a second home.  She loves punk from the seventies and eighties.  Loving punk, skateboarding, and zines, she's sure she falls far short of the more traditionally feminine Mexican American senorita she feels that her mother would like her to be.

     MaLu's first day of school doesn't go well.  A popular mean girl picks on her.  She gets sent out of homeroom for a dress code violation.  She has to bring a note to her mother who suggests that she be "less punk rocker and more senorita."

     MaLu doesn't like to stand out.  But when she senses unfairness in her school's choices of talent show acts she knows that she has to do something.

     A number of MaLu's zines add visual interest to the narrative.

     This perceptive coming of age story is a Pura Belpre honor book.

On a purrrsonal note, I shudder when I look out the window at all the slippery snow.  It snowed well into the night.  Eugene left the house about 11:00 to plow.  I'm hoping he gets back in time for me to make him breakfast and get a ride to school.  Walking will be less treacherous when I go back home in the afternoon.  (Jules)

I don't like her going out in that mess.  (Tobago)

A great big shout out goes out to all the blizzard battlers making commuting safer and easier for so many people.

Tobago and Jules Hathaway 

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