To Have and to Hold
- Guess what? It's moving time again. And since strawberry season is over, this means Francisco's family is heading to the Fresno area to pick grapes. This year they're going to try out a town called Orosi.
- During the road trip, Francisco checks out his penny collection. He has his two favorites on top: a 1910 Lincoln Head that belonged to his dad (1910 is the year Papá was born and the year the Mexican Revolution started), and an 1865 Indian Head that he got this from his fifth-grade buddy Carl, back in Corcoran.
- So back to the road trip: the other prize possession Francisco has with him is his notebook. It's small and blue and boy is he proud of it.
- It all started back in sixth grade. Remember how he had to leave Mr. Lema's class when his family moved? Well in his new classroom in Santa Maria he has a teacher named Miss Martin and she seems pretty great, too. Miss Martin started a game where she'd write down an English word on the board and everyone had to look it up as fast as possible. Francisco decides to use this spiffy technique to learn as many English words as he can, so he writes them down and memorizes them, even after leaving Miss M's class. Eventually this notepad becomes the place where Francisco writes down everything he wants to remember from all his classes, so it's super important to him.
- Okay, we're back to the road trip again, because Francisco and his fam finally arrive in Orosi. The awesome thing is that they get to live in a house in this new town. And it has two bedrooms so all the boys get their own, while Mamá and Papá share a room with little Rorra. By the way, Rorra seems super interested in Francisco's fancy pennies, and he's being super possessive of them.
- After their first long day of working in the grape fields, Francisco checks on his beloved pennies… but his favorites are gone. Oh no.
- Francisco confronts Rorra, and it turns out she took the pennies and put them in the gumball machine at the store. Needless to say, Francisco is seriously ticked off.
- The next day Francisco picks grapes again, and this time he's working hard on memorizing his spelling rules too. He's got his notepad safe in wax paper so it stays clean.
- After work, Francisco and Roberto get kerosene to work their kitchen stove, but when they pour it into the stove it turns out to be gasoline instead, and the stove lights on fire, basically setting the whole house aflame.
- Everyone has to leave, and Francisco's notebook is still inside. Pretty soon, the whole house is burned down, and Francisco is in tears.
- A few weeks later, though, Francisco realizes he's already learned everything in his book.