I recently finished reading "The Grapes of Wrath" and "The Pearl" by John Steinbeck. These two books and many others by Steinbeck have a few things in common. The first thing is that they only concern poor people/families. The second thing is that they almost always end up being terribly sad. The third thing they share is that I really like each of them. I've never read a John Steinbeck book that I didn't like, even though his books don't really cheer me up. “The Pearl” is about a poor man named Kino, his wife Juana and their little boy Coyotito. Kino is a pearl diver, but because there are so many other pearl divers where he lives, he very rarely finds valuable pearls. At the very beginning of the book, Coyotito is stung by a scorpion and becomes very ill. As Kino and his family are very poor, they cannot afford to hire a doctor for Coyotito. The next day, Kino finds a pearl beyond his wildest dreams. Word spreads around town about Kino's incredible pearl and the pearl buyers make a deal with each other to offer Kino very little for his pearl. The doctor, however, believed that Kino would soon have enough money to pay for his son's illness, so the doctor cured Coyotito. The next day, when Kino went to town to sell his pearl, he refused to give it to the pearl buyers for such a small amount of money. After a few attempts by strangers to steal the pearl at night, Kino killed an intruder in his house during the night. They knew they had to escape and they did. They were extremely careful, but they still couldn't escape the people who were looking for them. One night, while Kino was trying to get rid of the people chasing them, one of the "hunters" shot Coyotito. This is how the book ended. “The Grapes of Wrath” was a much longer book, once again about a poor, depressed family, the Joads. The Joads were a farming family in Oklahoma before they were forced off their land by the bank. Someone gave them a flyer telling them there was work in California, so they sold all their possessions to get enough money to buy an old, beat-up used car. Next, Tom, Dad, Mom, Ruthie, Winfield,