Congratulations to the authors and illustrators who were honored at the American Library Association’s Midwinter conference! Here are the honored tiles by Latinx creators. Click on each book for more information from Indiebound.
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John Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature:
Winner
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The Pura Belpré Awards honor Latinx writers and illustrators whose children’s books best portray, affirm and celebrate the Latino cultural experience.
The Pura Belpré Illustrator Award Winner:
Honor Books:
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The Pura Belpré Children’s Author Award Winner:
Honor Books:
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The Pura Belpré Young Adult Author Award Winner:
Honor Books:
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The Coretta Scott King Awards recognize African American authors and illustrators of outstanding books for children and young adults.
(Author) Honor Book:
(Illustrator) Honor Books:
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The Schneider Family Book Award for books that embody an artistic expression of the disability experience:
Honor Book (middle grades):
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The Mildred L. Batchelder Award for an outstanding book originally published in a language other than English in a country other than the United States, and subsequently translated into English for publication in the United States:
Honor Book:
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The Odyssey Award for the best audiobooks produced for children and young adults, available in English in the United States:
Winner:
Honor Audiobook:
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The Theodor Seuss Geisel Award for the most distinguished beginning reader book:
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The Pura Belpré Award is named after Pura Belpré, the first Latina librarian at the New York Public Library. The Pura Belpré Award, established in 1996, is presented annually to a Latinx writer and illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth.
We have been marking the award’s 25th anniversary in different ways on the blog. Today, Dr. Sonia Rodriguez and Emily R. Aguiló-Pérez talk about Viva Frida by Yuyi Morales. The book won the 2015 Pura Belpré Illustration Award.
ABOUT THE BOOK: Frida Kahlo, one of the world’s most famous and unusual artists is revered around the world. Her life was filled with laughter, love, and tragedy, all of which influenced what she painted on her canvases.
Distinguished author/illustrator Yuyi Morales illuminates Frida’s life and work in this elegant and fascinating book.
Sonia Alejandra Rodriguez, PhD is an Associate Professor of English at LaGuardia Community College (CUNY) where she teaches composition, literature, and creative writing. Her academic research focuses on decolonial healing in Latinx children’s and young adult literature. Sonia is a Mellon Emerging Faculty Leader.
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Emily R. Aguiló-Pérez is an Assistant Professor of English (Children’s Literature) at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. Her teaching and research are in the areas of children’s literature (particularly Latinx literature), girlhood studies, and children’s cultures. Her published work has focused on girlhood as represented in literature and Puerto Rican girls’ identity formation with Barbie dolls. She has presented research on Latinx children’s books at various conferences and has served on children’s book award committees such as the 2017 Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award and the 2018 Pura Belpré Award. Currently, she is part of the Pennsylvania Center for the Book’s “A Baker’s Dozen” committee.
We are an affiliate with Indiebound and Bookshop. If If you make a purchase through these links, at no additional cost to you, we will earn a small commission.
The Pura Belpré Award is named after Pura Belpré, the first Latina librarian at the New York Public Library. The Pura Belpré Award, established in 1996, is presented annually to a Latinx writer and illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth.
We have been marking the award’s 25th anniversary in different ways on the blog. Today, Dr. Sonia Rodriguez and Cecilia Cackley talk with Yuyi Morales and Donna Barba Higuera.
YUYI MORALES is a Mexican author, illustrator, artist, and puppet maker. She has a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Physical Education from the University of Xalapa, México and used to host her own Spanish-language radio program for children in San Francisco, California. She has won numerous awards for her children’s books, including the Caldecott Honor for Viva Frida and the Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award for Just a Minute: A Trickster Tale and Counting Book (2004) and Los Gatos Black on Halloween (2008). Yuyi has also won multiple Pura Belpré Author and Illustrator awards and honors:
Just a Minute: A Trickster Tale and Counting Book (2004 illustrator award)
Harvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez (2004 illustrator honor)
Los Gatos Black on Halloween (2008 illustrator award)
Just in Case: A Trickster Tale and Spanish Alphabet Book (2009 author honor)
Just in Case: A Trickster Tale and Spanish Alphabet Book (2009 illustrator award)
DONNA BARBA HIGUERA grew up in central California surrounded by agricultural and oil fields. As a child, rather than dealing with the regular dust devils, she preferred spending recess squirreled away in the janitor’s closet with a good book. Her favorite hobbies were calling dial-a-story over and over again, and sneaking into a restricted cemetery to weave her own spooky tales using the crumbling headstones as inspiration.
Donna’s Middle Grade and Picture Books are about kids who find themselves in odd or scary situations. From language to cultural differences in being biracial, life can become…complicated. So. like Donna, characters tackle more than just the bizarre things that happen to them in their lives.
Donna likes to write about all things funny, but also sad, and creepy, and magical. If you like those things, she hopes you will read her books!
Donna lives in Washington State with her family, three dogs, and two frogs.
Sonia Alejandra Rodriguez, PhD is an Associate Professor of English at LaGuardia Community College (CUNY) where she teaches composition, literature, and creative writing. Her academic research focuses on decolonial healing in Latinx children’s and young adult literature. Sonia is a Mellon Emerging Faculty Leader.
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Cecilia Cackley is a Mexican-American playwright and puppeteer based in Washington, DC. A longtime bookseller, she is currently the Children’s/YA buyer and event coordinator for East City Bookshop on Capitol Hill. Find out more about her art at www.ceciliacackley.com or follow her on Twitter @citymousedc
We are an affiliate with Indiebound and Bookshop. If If you make a purchase through these links, at no additional cost to you, we will earn a small commission.
The Pura Belpré Award is named after Pura Belpré, the first Latina librarian at the New York Public Library. The Pura Belpré Award, established in 1996, is presented annually to a Latinx writer and illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth.
We have been marking the award’s 25th anniversary in different ways on the blog. Today, Dr. Sonia Rodriguez and Cecilia Cackley talk with Guadalupe García McCall and Yamile Saied Méndez.
Photo by Michael Mercado Smith
Guadalupe García McCall is a young adult novelist, educator, poet, and speaker. Born in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico, she immigrated with her close-knit family to Eagle Pass, Texas (the setting for most of her poems and some of her novels) when she was six years old.
Guadalupe is the author of Under the Mesquite (MG, Lee & Low Books, 2011), an autobiographical novel in verse based on her family’s difficult times, struggling with loss and grief during her teenage years. Her second novel, Summer of the Mariposas (MG, Tu Books, an imprint of Lee & Low Books, 2012), is a magical retelling of the Odyssey starring five Mexican-American sisters and featuring monsters and legendary characters from Mexican mythology.
Guadalupe’s third novel, Shame the Stars (YA, Tu Books, an imprint of Lee & Low Books, 2016), is a historical reimagining of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet set during the tumultuous times at the turn of the century known as La Matanza (the slaughter/genocide). Her latest book, All the Stars Denied (YA, Tu Books, an imprint of Lee & Low Books, 2018) is a companion novel to Shame the Stars and illustrates the struggles of the del Toro family 16 years later, during the 1930’s repatriation of more than a million Mexican and Mexican-Americans, 600,000 of which were US citizens.
Guadalupe’s fifth novel, The Keeper, a MG Horror/Mystery about a boy who receives increasingly threatening letters from a stranger who calls himself “the Keeper” will be available from Harper Collins on January 25, 2022, and her sixth novel, Echoes of Grace, a YA gothic set on the US/Mexico borderlands which explores the nature of sisterhood, family secrets, sexual crimes against women, and femicide is forthcoming from Tu Books, an imprint of Lee & Low Books, in the Fall of 2022.
Guadalupe travels all over the country speaking to students and adults on topics of importance to the Latine community. She is an advocate for literacy and diverse books. In her travels, she is always looking for a good taco place and she never met a chocolate mole sauce she didn’t love! She loves to garden, cook, read, write, walk, and take pictures of nature. Though she keeps a home in Texas, she is currently an Assistant Professor of English at George Fox University and lives with her husband in the Pacific Northwest most of the year.
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YAMILE SAIED MÉNDEZ is a fútbol-obsessed Argentine-American Pura Belpré gold medal winning author. She lives in Utah with her Puerto Rican husband and their five kids, two adorable dogs, and one majestic cat. An inaugural Walter Dean Myers Grant recipient, she’s also a graduate of Voices of Our Nations (VONA) and the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA Writing for Children’s and Young Adult program. She writes picture books, middle grade, young adult and adult romance fiction. Yamile is a founding member of Las Musas, the first collective of women and nonbinary Latinx MG and YA authors. She’s represented by Linda Camacho at Gallt & Zacker Literary.
Sonia Alejandra Rodriguez, PhD is an Associate Professor of English at LaGuardia Community College (CUNY) where she teaches composition, literature, and creative writing. Her academic research focuses on decolonial healing in Latinx children’s and young adult literature. Sonia is a Mellon Emerging Faculty Leader.
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Cecilia Cackley is a Mexican-American playwright and puppeteer based in Washington, DC. A longtime bookseller, she is currently the Children’s/YA buyer and event coordinator for East City Bookshop on Capitol Hill. Find out more about her art at www.ceciliacackley.com or follow her on Twitter @citymousedc
We are an affiliate with Indiebound and Bookshop. If If you make a purchase through these links, at no additional cost to you, we will earn a small commission.
The Pura Belpré Award is named after Pura Belpré, the first Latina librarian at the New York Public Library. The Pura Belpré Award, established in 1996, is presented annually to a Latinx writer and illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth.
We have been marking the award’s 25th anniversary in different ways on the blog. Today, Dr. Sonia Rodriguez and Cecilia Cackley talk with Meg Medina and Jenny Torres Sanchez.
Photo by Sonya Sones
MEG MEDINA is a Newbery award-winning and New York Times best-selling author who writes picture books, as well as middle grade and young adult fiction. Her works have been called “heartbreaking,” “lyrical” and “must haves for every collection.” She lives with her family in Richmond, Va.
JENNY TORRES SANCHEZ is a full-time writer and former English teacher. She was born in Brooklyn, New York, but has lived on the border of two worlds her whole life. She lives in Orlando, Florida, with her husband and children.
Sonia Alejandra Rodriguez, PhD is an Associate Professor of English at LaGuardia Community College (CUNY) where she teaches composition, literature, and creative writing. Her academic research focuses on decolonial healing in Latinx children’s and young adult literature. Sonia is a Mellon Emerging Faculty Leader..
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Cecilia Cackley is a Mexican-American playwright and puppeteer based in Washington, DC. A longtime bookseller, she is currently the Children’s/YA buyer and event coordinator for East City Bookshop on Capitol Hill. Find out more about her art at www.ceciliacackley.com or follow her on Twitter @citymousedc
We are an affiliate with Indiebound and Bookshop. If If you make a purchase through these links, at no additional cost to you, we will earn a small commission.
The Pura Belpré Award is named after Pura Belpré, the first Latina librarian at the New York Public Library. The Pura Belpré Award, established in 1996, is presented annually to a Latinx writer and illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth.
We have been marking the award’s 25th anniversary in different ways on the blog. Today, Dr. Sonia Rodriguez and Dora M. Guzmán talk about ¡Vamos! Let’s Go Eat!byRaúl the Third. The book won the 2021 Pura Belpré Illustration Award.
ABOUT THE BOOK: In this new Vamos! title, Let’s Go Eat, Little Lobo is excited to take in a show with wrestling star El Toro in his bustling border town. After getting lunch orders from The Bull and his friends to help prepare for the event, Little Lobo takes readers on a tour of food trucks that sell his favorite foods, like quesadillas with red peppers and Mexican-Korean tacos. Peppered with easy-to-remember Latin-American Spanish vocabulary, this glorious celebration of food is sure to leave every reader hungry for lunch!
Sonia Alejandra Rodriguez, PhD is an Associate Professor of English at LaGuardia Community College (CUNY) where she teaches composition, literature, and creative writing. Her academic research focuses on decolonial healing in Latinx children’s and young adult literature. Sonia is a Mellon Emerging Faculty Leader.
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Dora M. Guzmán is a bilingual reading specialist for grades K-5 and also teaches college courses in Children’s Literature and Teaching Beginning Literacy. She is currently a doctoral student with a major in Reading, Language, and Literacy. When she is not sharing her love of reading with her students, you can find her in the nearest library, bookstore, or online, finding more great reads to add to her never-ending “to read” pile!
Latinxs in Kid Lit 