Figurative, Descriptive, and Multilingual
Manny is a pretty creative guy, and since he's our narrator, we're not surprised that the writing style is seriously descriptive. And since Manny is also a main character straddling two cultures, it makes sense that the writing style is multilingual. Get ready to bump into some Spanish along the way.
Always Describe
As our narrator, Manny knows how to get our imaginations running, so when he decides to tell us a story, we are given figurative descriptions that are both super beautiful and make us think. In fact, keep an eye out for all the similes and metaphors that he uses throughout the book. For instance, check out this passage where Manny tells us about his new job helping his brother:
I helped him with his route on Saturdays, when the weather was either snips of cold snagging fishhooks through your clothes, or just plain icy, with steam flowing from every breath. (9.1)
The sentence could have stopped after the first part—"I helped him with his route on Saturdays" gives us all the facts we need—but it goes on, creating a vivid picture of the cold Manny and his brother work through. In doing so, we get both a better sense of Manny as a narrator (dude's creative) and a better sense of what he's willing to do to help his brother. He doesn't work through sunshine, he works through truly biting cold.
Take Two Languages and Mix Them Up
Manny speaks two languages, English and Spanish, so when we hear his story we also get to hear both languages at work. Sure, the book is ninety-nine percent in English, but Manny still throws in some Spanish every now and then.
This can be a wee bit tricky for readers who don't know Spanish, especially since Manny doesn't normally give us a dictionary-like definition, leaving us to be detectives if we don't already know the language. Here's an example of a moment when the text busts out its bilingual style:
Not that the Chicano guys couldn't fight or anything. There were a lot of ornery vatos around, but they just hung around and smoked and ditched class and acted like the school was some kind of contaminated nuclear zone. (7.34)
If you don't know Spanish, can you guess what the word "vatos" means? Well if not, never fear because we're here to tell you: Vatos is basically the equivalent of dudes or guys in English. More importantly, though, in speckling the text with Spanish, we are reminded that our main character and his family are navigating cross-cultural experiences, as well as everything else they have on their plates.