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A Finalist for the 2023 YALSA Excellence in Young Adult Nonfiction Award.Rex Ogle’s companion to Free Lunch and Punching Bag weaves humor, heartbreak, and hope into life-affirming poems that honor his grandmother’s legacy.In his award-winning memoir Free Lunch, Rex Ogle’s abuela features as a source of love and support. In this companion-in-verse, Rex captures and celebrates the powerful presence a woman he could always count on—to give him warm hugs and ear kisses, to teach him precious words in Spanish, to bring him to the library where he could take out as many books as he wanted, and to offer safety when darkness closed in. Throughout a coming of age marked by violence and dysfunction, Abuela’s red-brick house in Abilene, Texas, offered Rex the possibility of home, and Abuela herself the possibility for a better life.Abuela, Don’t Forget Me is a lyrical portrait of the transformative and towering woman who believed in Rex even when he didn’t yet know how to believe in himself.

Punching Bag is the compelling true story of a high school career defined by poverty and punctuated by outbreaks of domestic abuse. Rex Ogle, who brilliantly mapped his experience of hunger in Free Lunch, here describes his struggle to survive; reflects on his complex, often paradoxical relationship with his passionate, fierce mother; and charts the trajectory of his stepdad's anger. Hovering over Rex's story is the talismanic presence of his unborn baby sister.Through it all, Rex threads moments of grace and humor that act as beacons of light in the darkness. Compulsively readable, beautifully crafted, and authentically told, Punching Bag is a remarkable memoir about one teenager's cycle of violence, blame, and attempts to forgive his parents--and himself.

A humorous and heartwarming middle-grade graphic memoir about fitting in, facing bullies, and finding the right pair of glasses.El sexto grado no es tan genial como Rex penso que seria. Es el unico chico que no ha dado el estiron, y los abusones se lo recordaran a cada instante. Ya no puede confiar en su mejor amigo, y no puede dejar de pensar en una linda chica de su clase, que es posible este interesada en el. Con tantas cosas sucediendo, a Rex todo le resulta borroso, ¡hasta su vision! Entonces descubre que necesita usar gafas, y su familia solo puede comprarle el par mas feo de la tienda. Cualquier esperanza que Rex tuviera de encajar se desvanece por completo.En esta historia real sobre la adolescencia, Rex tiene la vista puesta en sobrevivir el sexto grado, pero ahora tiene que encontrar la manera de hacerlo con gafas, sin amigos y con una familia que simplemente no lo entiende.Sixth grade isn't as great as Rex thought it would be. He's the only kid who hasn't had a growth spurt,