"My primary goal in writing both scholarly and creative works is to fill the need for cultural and human understanding, between the United States and Mexico in particular," writer and professor Francisco Jiménez once commented. The author has taken a major step towards this goal with his autobiographical collection The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child. This award-winning book provides young readers with an intimate portrait of life growing up in a Mexican American migrant family. In depicting both the hardships and the hopes of Mexicans who move through California in search of work, The Circuit "fills a void in novels for young people," a New Advocate reviewer stated.

Jiménez was born in Mexico in 1943, the second child in a family that would eventually include nine children. When he was just four, he and his older brother Roberto entered the United...