Lety Out Loud by Angela Cervantes

Lety Out Loud Reviews

• 
  Andrew

  What a refreshing, sweet, and absolutely heartwarming book! It feels like a hug not only to you, but to the animals in your life. Lety is attending day camp with her friends at an animal shelter. She's both nervous and excited about writing pet profiles, since English is her second language. This is not only a story of animals and friendship, but in unapologetically living your true self in America, and the people that matter will always stand by that right. Lety Out Loud is the happiest, most uplifting kind of tear-jerker. Please do not miss out on this must-read middle grade.
• 
  Shannon Thompson

  A wonderful story about finding your voice, adorable animals, and unexpected friendship. A must-read.
• 
  Kristen Harvey

  Made me cry at the end. I wish I could adopt all the pets. This is possibly the best book I've read and I want to buy a million copies and hand it out to all my students. I love the topics in here - the struggles of being an ELL student, competition, and of course helping lovable adoptable cats and dogs at a shelter. I just loved this story and I want every cat and dog to find a furever home.
• 
  Laura Gardner

  I highly recommend this feel good story about a young Latinx girl finding her voice...and some dog love! ❤️🐶
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  Lety is volunteering at a shelter with her friends for the summer. She wants to be the shelter scribe and write profiles for the animals that need homes, but she lacks confidence in her writing skills because English is her second language. This book is short, uplifting and relevant. .
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  Available NOW on Sora from the school/MLS collection, SAILS and BPL! Email or message me if you want to learn how to add ALL these libraries for free! Recommended for grades 3-6. By @angelacervantes_author and the winner of the Pura Bepre honor award. 😍
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  #middleschoollibrarian #middleschoollibrary #library #librarian #futurereadylibs #iteachlibrary #bookstagrammer #bookstagram #librariesofinstagram #librariansofinstagram #librariesfollowlibraries #librarylife #librarianlife #schoollibrarian #middlegrade #middlegradebooks #iteach #librarylove #booksbooksbooks #amreading #bibliophile #schoollibrariansrock #bookreview #bookrecommendation #igreads #malibrary #msla #mediaspecialist
• 
  Cheryl

  Oh my goodness, to be a kid again and to have this kind of book written for us. If I were an immigrant, I would feel so respected & represented. If I were white, I would be enlightened. And either way I'd feel joyful and cozy. There's a realistic incident of awful racism, but everyone except that one dude is very cool and nice. What a book for sharing hope and inspiration. Highly recommended.
  
  Btw, I have not read the rest of the series. They're not needed to appreciate this. I don't know whether I will read more. If I were a kid, absolutely. But I do have an awful lot of tbr already that I really really want to read.
• 
  Yamile Méndez

  What can I say? I love Angela's writing, and this beautiful story of a young girl finding her voice was perfect. I loved seeing a glimpse into the lives of my favorite characters from Gaby Lost and Found.
• 
  Alina Karapandzich

  If you're looking for a feel-good, Middle grade chapter book, then this is definitely the book for you! This book made me smile countless times and the ending left me feeling so warm inside. It also gracefully covers difficult topics like racism against Latinos in the U.S. and the struggles of being an immigrant child trying to fit in and how animals can make that transition a lot easier with their unconditional love. Love love love this book
• 
  Roxy Moreno

  The book “Lety Out Loud” by Angela Cervantes is about an English learner named Lety who volunteers at a shelter. Lety and her best friends were volunteering at an animal shelter summer camp called Furry Friends. The shelter needs somebody to write animal profiles, and just as Lety is about to sign, a boy named Hunter gets in her way and signs his name. They can’t decide who will write the profiles, so they set up a secret competition for the job. They split the profiles up so Lety gets five and Hunter gets five, and whoever gets all of their animals adopted first gets to be the shelter scribe. Can Lety make good profiles and get these animals adopted before Hunter? I recommend this book to any animal lover because this book shows you how to not give up and find your voice. I would also recommend that you know how to read Spanish because there are parts in this book that are in Spanish they have no translation.
  
• 
  Serenity

  *I received a free review copy of this book from the publisher through my district library services*
  
  I really enjoyed this book, and I read it rather quickly.
  
  Lety is an immigrant, who has been in the US for three years and is still learning English. She is spending the summer at an animal shelter summer camp with her two best friends. She finds herself in a contest to be the shelter "scribe," writing profiles for animals up for adoption.
  
  I appreciated the insight into Lety's experience as a language learner (phrases like "miss the boat" confuse her--something it's easy to forget for those of us who are native speakers). I also liked that we got to see a little more of her opponent in the contest, and the reminder that we shouldn't always take people at face value when we don't know what's going on in their lives. Although Lety is just a smidge of a Mary Sue, it's still an enjoyable story and I can't wait to share this with my students.
• 
  Beth

  What a lovely book! Every student should read this book, and be more open to learning new languages and helping other kids learn English. I also really enjoyed all of the focus on writing about the animals at the shelter. By the way, I don't want the kiddos learning English to lose their accents! It makes everything they say more beautiful! I highly recommend this book!
• 
  Jennifer

  This is Sequoyah book #1 for the 2021 year. Super sweet story which will be perfect for animal lovers or kids who have ever struggled to fit in in a new place. I feel this book will especially resonate with language learners.
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  Keri Murcray

  It was soo good! I loved the story and the characters and it was so heart-warming. Definitely want to read more by this author.
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  Pumkin pie

  Very fun and exciting! Definitely one of my favorites. Any one who loves animals will love this.
• 
  Heidi

  I went in to this book with lower expectations and was very pleasantly surprised. It was a well-written book about issues many students (younger and older) may experience.
  Lety's family is from Mexico and for the last three years she has been in ELL classes learning English and learning to perfect the language. She has other friends who are also immigrants, just not necessarily from Mexico. The one thing they have in common is their constant feeling of wanting to fit in. So, when she gets an opportunity to attend a summer day camp at the local Animal Shelter, she decides to forego the ELL summer school she usually attends. Soon, she is in a competition with one of her classmates to become the "shelter scribe" and write the profiles for animals at the shelters. These profiles go online and are posted at the shelter. This is an opportunity for Lety to practice her English reading and writing skills. And it's easy for her because she LOVES the animals.
  Soon, though, the camp becomes more about making new friends and standing up for others than it is just about the camp experience.
  This book has very timely issues such as an angry man in a "red baseball cap" telling Lety's friend, her mom and the pharmacist to speak English because they are in America, and a classmate who's father and mother are divorcing and the issues get rather hateful and complicated.
  The ultimate story revolves around the kids and the animals, so it would have broad appeal.
• 
  Melanie Dulaney

  Angela Cervantes’ Lety Out Loud is a book that will appeal to a broad range of middle grade readers of both genders. With its setting almost exclusively at an animal rescue shelter, those who love all things furry will appreciate the plethora of four (and three!) legged friends. Readers of realistic fiction will find at least one character that they connect to as Hunter, Mario, Lety, Brisa, Alma, and Kennedy present with a variety of genders, races, personalities, and with strikingly different circumstances. And without even realizing it, those who join these kids in their summer volunteer program will be encouraged to actively seek solutions to life’s tough issues of divorce, loss, adapting to new places, and bigotry and to never give up when something is truly worthwhile. Excellent book that will likely send many to their parents with requests to go adopt a new friend at their closet animal rescue center! Highly recommended with no content reservations for readers in grades 4-6.
• 
  Becky

  The Furry Friends Animal Shelter is the backdrop where students volunteer to get animals adopted. Lety, a bilingual student, feels the challenge of learning a new language and finding the right words. She, along with Hunter, another student volunteer, both want to write pet profiles but this task turns into a competition with misunderstandings and an unexpected friendship that develops.
  
  This book shares an ELL Students process in learning a new language and the fears of fitting in and finding a voice.
  
  Exceptional book! I was enthralled and rooting for the kids AND all the pets to the very end.
• 
  Emily

  William Allen White Award Nominee 2021/2022
  
  This is a great middle grade read that I will definitely be recommending to younger readers in the library. It's cute, has great characters, has animals, and discusses hard and relevant topics in a way that I think younger readers will relate to and understand.
• 
  Jora

  Only 197 pages, not 208. Weird, because this is a hardcover. I found this book to be for a very young audience (7-9). I didn't love it, or even really enjoy it. The book is sweet, but the characters are hard to love, and the descriptions are okay at best.
• 
  Emma

  Oh man, I love this book!!! So sweet and hopeful, while still being honest and realistic. I can't wait to bring this to my next book talk with third graders and hopefully they'll all love it as much as I do!
• 
  Barbara

  This one is a 3.5 for me, and I enjoyed it thoroughly, thrilled to return to the animal shelter featured in the author's earlier boo, Gaby, Lost and Found. It's the summer before her sixth grade year, and Lety Munoz and her friends Brisa and Kennedy are volunteering at the Furry Friends Animal Shelter as part of their summer camp. Lety longs to adopt Spike, a terrier whose abundant energy has prompted his past adopters to return him to the shelter. But Lety sees something special in the dog. Even though she's been in ELL classes for the past few years at El Camino Charter Elementary, Lety hasn't mastered all the idioms that are sprinkled into the English language, and her confusion results in some authentic but humorous moments. She volunteers to help write profiles for 10 of the animals in hopes that they'll get adopted. But Hunter, a boy from the same grade but a different class in her school, also volunteers, and their friends decide to make the profile-writing a competition instead of a collaborative effort. At first it seems that Hunter is a jerk and quick to put Lety down, but eventually, as she learns about his secret pain and they get to know each other, they become friends, and she realizes that he has a soft heart. The author has crafted a story that will appeal to animal lovers and fans of the underdog even while making it clear just how prejudiced others can be toward anyone who doesn't speak English clearly. There are passages that describe how Lety hates being called an ELL and others in which her brother Eddie encourages their father to learn to speak English in order to fit in better. There are also moments of sadness over losing their Spanish language and culture as well as incidents of adults behaving badly and youngsters such as Lety coming up with creative ideas combining literacy and animals. Although everything turns out just fine in the end, fifth and sixth grade readers will be holding their breaths for much of the time in concern for the characters and those dogs and cats at the shelter. It would be hard to resist those animal profiles.
• 
  Sarah T.

  Oh lord, I loved this book so much. I wish I had Lety's (and Eddie too, man, he was such a totally sweet little badass!) courage (and I'm closer to 40 than 30 these days)!
  
  My fear with this book is that people will gripe about it being too political, with the racist old white man who wears "a red hat," and yells at Brisa, her pregnant mother and a pharmacist for speaking Spanish in America. Well, you know what? This happens EVERY DAY to immigrants, not just in America but all over the world. Its not enough to be here as a productive, taxpaying member of society. You have to learn English AS FAST AS YOU CAN. That's not enough either--BETTER GET RID OF THAT ACCENT! The standards that immigrants are held too are so high that as much as they try, people will always vilify them and it's horrible.
  
  But kids NEED to know that this stuff happens. This book is a safe way to expose them to this particular ugliness in the world, AND it also shows that if you see something wrong, if you see people getting mistreated--speak up. Eddie was 8 and he stood between Brisa and her mom, and the old white man with the red hat, told/showed that man they are all learning English. Just like him. That was a powerful scene and kids need to not only see the reality of our times, but that they can help people too, just by speaking up.
  
  The old man is even humanized later in the book when he shows up at the shelter with his 2 daughters. He doesn't change his ways, but seeing him with 2 sweet kids just proves AOC right, "Having daughters does not make you a decent man... treating people with dignity and respect is what makes a decent man."
  
  I liked Hunter too. He was a great example that when people aren't being nice, there may be a tragic story behind that behavior. He also shows the reader that people can grow and change.
  
  And Lety. Lord, she was so brave and compassionate. I just want to hug her!
  
  This book was fantastic, and I hope I don't see people griping about it being "partisan." It's about a human experience, period.
• 
  Jinghan

  Alternative Assessment:
  
  I found this is an adorable and heartwarming book. Through the cover of the book, we can predict that it’s a book about a dog. However, after I finished reading the book, I realized that the book contains a lot of other important topics, such as rivalries, determination, and friendship. All these topics make the book exciting and meaningful. So my idea for the alternative assessment would be the book cover design. “Pupils need to understand words and have mental images to connect different ideas to make meaning from their reading texts” (Yusuf, 2016, p. 21). The book cover design will require students to use drawings and visuals to presents their comprehension of the story. According to Yusuf (2016, p.20), drawing pictures is a great way to nurture students’ creation of sensory images. The purpose of my alternative assessment would be that students could use their creativity to design an attractive and impressive book cover to show their understanding. Before students start their assessment, I would inform students of the common elements contained in a book cover, such as the title, author, images, and book blurbs, and so on. In addition, students have to identify all the important elements in the story and try to use their drawings to present these elements in their book cover. Some important elements they could consider including the characters, the main events, the settings, and the topics. Then students have to write a rationale for their book cover to explain the elements they chose to include and how they relate to the book. Students’ walk would be displayed around the classroom, and all the students could walk around to see each other’s ideas.
  
  Reference:
  Yusuf, H. O. (2016). Effectiveness of using creative mental images in teaching reading comprehension in primary schools in Nigeria. American Journal of Educational Research, 4(1), 18-21.
• 
  Suzanne Dix

  Sweet and wholesome, Lety Out Loud is a story about loyalty and friendship. Heading into sixth grade, Lety and her two best friends, Kennedy and Brisa, have signed up for Furry Friends Animal Shelter summer camp. The camp assigns different tasks for the campers and Lety is eager to become a Shelter Scribe, someone who writes the witty little blurbs to describe the dogs and cats that are up for adoption. It’s a crucial job that helps get the pets into forever homes and though Lety is still a new English-language learner, she wants to try to both help the animals and improve her English. Mean-boy Henry however has other ideas and thinks his superior reading and writing skills should make him scribe. The campers cook up a contest to see whether Henry or Lety’s animal profiles get the most animals adopted. The competition makes Lety uncomfortable but she can’t help getting pulled in. Working alongside Henry also has some interesting outcomes, the most important is finding out that Henry is struggling with a family issue and his grumpiness is because his dog was left behind when his parents split up. He misses his dog like an ache and Lety can’t help but try to improve the situation. Lety is a great friend and frequently thinks of others before herself which also makes her a great candidate to be a pet owner. She’s had her eye on Spike, a rascal of a dog, since the beginning of camp but now needs to prove to the shelter director (who has found out about the competition and is none too pleased), her family and herself. A nice addition to upper elementary or middle grade collections where animal fiction is popular. There is also the opportunity to use this novel to highlight how hard ELL students work to better themselves in school despite disdain and mockery from classmates.
  
• 
  Vanessa

  Leí este libro en español, y me gustó, pero creo que la versión original escrito en inglés sería mejor. Habían algunas frases que sonaban como lo habían traducido palabra por palabra. Se trata de Lety, una estudiante del programa ELL, que está pasando su verano trabajando como voluntaria en un refugio de animales. Le gusta escribir, entonces su trabajo es ser escritora de perfiles de animales en el refugio para que encuentren un hogar. Hay otro niño, Hunter, que también quiere ser el escritor. Entonces, se entran en una competencia de ver quién es el mejor escritor. Lety, por supuesto, tiene bastante inseguridad porque inglés es su segundo idioma y teme no poder escribir tan bien como Hunter. (Me podía relacionar con ella porque también tengo bastante inseguridad de hablar y escribir en mi segundo idioma aunque soy orgullosamente bilingüe.)
  
  Al principio pensaba que este libro era demasiado sencillo, y mis estudiantes estaban de acuerdo porque lo empezamos como lectura en voz alta y después de 40 páginas no querían seguir con este libro. Pero yo lo terminé, y sí tenía algunos temas más profundos, como el prejuicio, el divorcio, y la identidad.
  
  Entonces, me gustó, pero prefiero leer libros escritos en español en vez de libros que han sido traducidos a español del inglés.
• 
  Shana OkieCozyReader

  This is a cute book about a girl from Mexico, who along with other immigrants from Central American countries, tries to find her own way in her classes. She enjoys writing because she can select her words carefully and she puts this into her descriptions of animals in a shelter, to help them get adopted (along with another - rude - boy who is competition with her).
  
  I love the quote in the middle of the book that I attribute to Michelle Obama, but I don’t know who originated it - “when they go low, we go high.”
  
  I also loved in the acknowledgements she mentions revisions with her 5th grade teacher who declared she had known a “lot of Hunter Farmers in my career. That boy just needed to believe in him.” I did think this book was great to this boy, like so many others who make mean choices. I love the quote “hurt people hurt people” and I think it also applies to middle schoolers.
  
  I think this would be a great 2-4th grade reader for something bridging into middle grade books. Perfect for all animal lovers.
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  Naomi Campbell

  I read this book aloud to our 14-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son. He rated it one star on account of 1, it's a girl book, he said; 2, there was no real action, and 3, it felt like it was for younger kids. She rated it three, because she is currently volunteering at an animal shelter and liked the little "ads" about the pets, and now we've read all three of these in the series and she met the author at her school a couple years ago. So I gave it a two, because I guess I kind of averaged their stars, and also, I felt like it was pretty immature for this age, but maybe it just IS for younger kids. I never did check. It was nice. It was pretty cheesy too though. But yet... The kids were so serious and worried in this book.
• 
  LaVonne Hanlon

  Gr. 3-6. Bilingual Lety worries that her emerging English skills won’t be eloquent enough to write ads to help get dogs and cats adopted at the Furry Friends Animal Shelter where she’s volunteering. But when a couple of boys challenge her to a contest to see who should be shelter scribe, she finds determination, friendship, and self-confidence can help her – and the pets for whom she advocates – overcome almost any obstacle. A charming follow-up to Cervantes’ heartwarming Gaby, Lost and Found, this novel is a welcome addition to Scholastic’s Wish series, which will expand in September 2020 to include seven books by various authors. Check Cervantes’ website at
  http://www.angelacervantes.com/lety-o... to explore the Pura Belpré honor award-winning author’s inspiration for writing.
• 
  Scgoff

  2.5 - only because of the overt political negative messaging in chapter 25-26. Otherwise I would have ranked it higher. I really enjoyed reading this to my kids for the School District assignment, it was great to see Lety’s point of view and understand her perspective. But the two chapters just KILLED it for me. My family has a “red hat” and we would NEVER yell at a family for speaking Spanish in a store because… we learned/speak Spanish. On purpose!!! This is dangerous messaging for kids; to feel like just because someone has a red hat, they hate immigrants?!?!? It creates and “other” group and doesn’t teach unity. It completely undoes the rest of the book- which demonstrates understanding of peoples lives. It reinforces intolerance for a certain group and that is gross.
• 
  Christina

  Sure this book is perfect for the animal lover, but it speaks the truth to so much more—the need for compassion and understanding for both animals and human beings! Lety discovers a way to practice her English and save animals at the same time, but is met with discriminatory comments from a rude boy vying for the same position at the animal shelter. Angela Cervantes easily addresses hard subjects of ignorance and racism for the middle grade reader, bringing to light tough, unfortunate, real-life situations. Readers will cheer for smart, kind Lety in this sweet story as she learns to believe in herself, celebrate her culture and persevere through adversity.