Dad believed people were like money. You could be a thousand-dollar person or a hundred-dollar person'even a ten-, five-, or one-dollar person. Below that, everybody was just nickels and dimes. To my dad, we were pennies. Fourteen-year-old Manny Hernandez wants to be more than just a penny. He wants to be a vato firme, the kind of guy people respect. But that's not easy when your father is abusive, your brother can't hold a job, and your mother scrubs the house as if she can was the trouble away. In Manny's neighborhood, the way to get respect is to be in a gang. But Manny's not sure that join ... More from Amazon