Crossing the Wire

• Genre: Fiction; young adult adventure
• Originally Published: 2006
• Reading Level/Interest: Lexile 670L; grades 5-6
• Structure/Length: 28 chapters; approx. 224 pages; approx. 5 hours, 45 minutes on audio
• Protagonist/Central Conflict: Fifteen-year-old Victor Flores heads north to cross from Mexico into America to find work when falling crop prices put his family in danger of starvation. His trek is fraught with peril—freezing cold, extreme heat, hunger, and the physical distance he must travel—and he struggles to survive the gauntlet so many have attempted in order to cross the wire into America.
• Potential Sensitivity Issues: Death of a family member; gang violence; illegal immigration; drug use; drug running

Will Hobbs, Author

• Bio: Born in 1947 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; author of 20 novels for elementary, middle school, and young adult readers; grew up in an Air Force family; fell in love with the outdoors when his family moved to Alaska; graduated from Stanford University with a BA and MA in English; taught reading for 14 years in Colorado; sets his stories in the wild places he’s been to engage readers’ sense of wonder; second novel Bearstone gained national attention when it replaced Where the Red Fern Grows in Prentice-Hall’s seventh-grade literature anthology; all 22 of his novels are still in print; has rowed 10 trips down the Grand Canyon; has been honored with three lifetime achievement awards: the Thomas Hornsby Ferril Lifetime Literary Achievement Award (1998), the Arizona Author Award from the Arizona Library Association (1999), and the Frank Waters Award from Pikes Peak Library (2001)
• Other Works: Changes in Latitudes (1988); Bearstone (1989); Far North (1996); Ghost Canoe (1997); Down the Yukon (2001); Go Big or Go Home (2008); City of Gold (2020)
• Awards: Southwest Book Award (2007); Heartland Award (2008); Junior Library Guild Selection; Notable Books for Global Society (IRA) (2007); New York Public Library Books for the Teenage; Americas Award Commended Title