Texas' Great Read 2018

Shame the Stars By Guadalupe García McCall

The Texas Center for the Book at the Texas State Library and Archives Commission has selected Shame the Stars by Texas author Guadalupe Garcia McCall as the 2018 Texas’ Great Read. Each year, states are asked to highlight a book representative of the region’s literary landscape at the National Book Festival. The event is sponsored by the Library of Congress and will take place September 1, 2018 in Washington, D.C., to showcase the importance of books and reading.
 

Shame the Stars by Guadalupe García McCall

It’s 1915, and trouble is brewing along the U.S.-Mexico border. Ordinary citizens are caught between the Mexican Revolution and the Texas Rangers’ fight with Tejano insurgents, including 18-year-old Joaquín del Toro. Joaquín has everything in front of him. He is set to inherit his family’s Texas ranch and has found the love of his life, Dulceña.

Tensions with the Revolution grow, and Joaquín is torn away from Dulceña. Her father’s critical newspaper coverage of the Rangers drives a wedge between their families. Joaquín’s own father refuses to take sides and insists that the Rangers are friends. When the family ranch is targeted, Joaquín knows he has to take a stand and decide what is right.

Set during the explosive years of Mexico’s revolution, Shame the Stars is a Texas reimagining of Romeo and Juliet. Filled with period detail, romance, and political intrigue, this novel brings new life to Shakespeare’s classic.

About the Author

Guadalupe Garcia McCall is the author of Under the Mesquite (Lee & Low Books), a novel in verse. Under the Mesquite received the prestigious Pura Belpre Author Award, was a William C. Morris Finalist, received the Lee Bennett Hopkins/International Literacy Promising Poet Award, the Tomas Rivera Children’s Book Award, and was included in Kirkus Review’s Best Teen Books of 2011, among many other accolades. Her second novel, Summer of the Mariposas (Tu Books, an imprint of Lee & Low Books), won a Westchester Young Adult Fiction award, was a finalist for the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy, was included in the 2013 Amelia Bloomer Project List, the Texas Lone Star Reading List, and the 2012 School Library Journal’s Best Books of the Year. Her third novel, Shame the Stars, is a Junior Library Guild Selection and was included in the 2016 Kirkus Best Books of the Year as well as the Américas Book Award Commended List. Her poems for children have appeared in The Poetry Friday Anthology, The Poetry Friday Anthology for Middle School, The Poetry Friday Anthology for Science, Poems Are Teachers, and World Make Way. Ms. Garcia McCall was born in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico. She immigrated with her family to the United States when she was six years old and grew up in Eagle Pass, Texas (the setting of both her novels and most of her poems). She is currently an Assistant Professor of English at George Fox University.

Reader/Teacher Resources

Teacher's Guide for the Book, which can be found here (PDF).

An interview on BookPage with Guadalupe about the people who inspired the story and why this history must be taught.

An interview on Rich in Color about her journey when writing Shame the Stars.

See current and past Great Read book selections from all 50 states.