Cotton Sack
- Since almost every story in this book starts with a move to a new city, you can bet this one isn't any different. It's time to move from the grape vines in Fresno back to Corcoran for cotton.
- The good news is that at one of the cotton fields, Francisco and his family find work and a cabin to call home. The bad news is that Francisco doesn't get his own sack for cotton-picking, and he's upset about it.
- It starts raining, which seems to happen a lot around cotton season. During the rain they sleep huddled together to stay warm, and look forward to sleeping in a bit. Oh, and there's a new baby sister, Rorra, to join in the slumber party.
- Mamá makes awesome homemade tortillas and beans for breakfast, then the brothers help wash the dishes before they all play games and tell ghost stories for the kids. Papá is sleeping off a cold.
- The rainy day fun is over when the boss honks his horn at 6:00AM, telling his workers that the cotton is dry.
- At the fields, Papá, Mamá, Roberto, and Francisco pick cotton all day. Francisco helps fill up his mom and dad's bags since he doesn't have his own, and when the bags are stuffed they weigh them so the boss knows how much to pay his workers. Some days, Francisco goes to school and picks cotton only when he gets home.
- So Francisco and his family have been picking cotton from late-October to mid-November, and now those cotton plants are bare as can be.
- So it's time to look for other cotton fields that still have some white fluff on them, and that's no easy task. Plus, when they finally find a field with some cotton, it's so cold outside that Francisco's hands freeze up. He really wants to prove that he can fill his own cotton sack, so our main man comes up with a kinda gross solution: he pees on his hands. Hey, he's just trying to get by. Sadly for Francisco, his hands get cold immediately after so his plan didn't really work out. No solo cotton sack for this dude.