{"id":494,"date":"2008-06-29T22:52:24","date_gmt":"2008-06-30T05:52:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/?p=494"},"modified":"2008-08-01T08:31:15","modified_gmt":"2008-08-01T15:31:15","slug":"pura-belpre-celebracion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/2008\/06\/pura-belpre-celebracion\/","title":{"rendered":"Pura Belpr\u00e9 Celebraci\u00ed\u00b3n"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve just returned from the Pura Belpr\u00e9 Celebraci\u00ed\u00b3n where we honored Margarita Engle, the author of\u00a0 The Poet Slave of Cuba<\/em>, a biography of Francisco Manzano; Yuyi Morales the artist and Marisa Montes the author of Los Gatos Black on Halloween<\/em>; Carmen T. Bernier-Grand, author of Frida Viva La Vida! Long Live Life!; <\/em>Maya Christina Gonzalez My Colors My World\/Mis Colores, Mi Mundo ; Ra\u00ed\u00bal Col\u00ed\u00b3n<\/em>, illustrator of Monica Brown\u2019s My Name is Gabito<\/em>; and Carmen Agra Deedy author of Martina the Beautiful Cocroach: A Cuban Folktale<\/em>. <\/p>\n

It was a joyful event, which started with Suni Paz\u2019s singing and maracas followed by REFORMA president Mario Ascencio and ALSC president Jane Marino\u2019s welcoming words and Jean Hatfield, the chair of the Pura Belpr\u00e9 Committee\u2019s introduction\u00a0to the award and the authors and illustrators.<\/p>\n

What made the event truly special was that each of the authors and illustrators said something heart-felt and memorable. Yuyi Morales listed all her childhood fears of ghosts, skeletons, brujas, and zombies and closed with a song to La Llorona, who just needs some love. \u00a0Margarita Engle spoke about her desire to let the world know about the poet whose talents were unquenchable in spite of brutal treatment and who, she was sure, was watching over her shoulders as she wrote. Marisa Montes described her life in terms of The Little Engine That Could <\/em>giving her mother particular thanks for instilling in her the value of perseverance. We heard about her determination to learn English, then to become a skater, later to become a lawyer, whether young women were encouraged in those days to go into law or not \u2014 she said she looked for strong women models \u2014 and to become a writer when she realized that is what she really wanted to do . Finally, she told the story of\u00a0 Los Gatos Black on Halloween\u2019<\/em>s publishing Odyssey from 1996 to 2006, with rejections by all the grand, important engines whose editors couldn\u2019t imagine what Spanish had to do with Halloween, for instance, until she found the editor at Holt, who saw exactly what Montes had in mind \u2014 a celebration of language. Carmen Bernier-Grand recited a poem in her mother\u2019s honor and talked about learning English and how her mother inspired her. Raul Col\u00ed\u00b3n talked about the pressures of working on multiple projects while creating the fantasy world of Gabriel <\/strong>Garc\u00ed\u00ada M\u00ed\u00a1rquez. Maya Christina Gonzalez sent her thanks and words through her editor from Children\u2019s Book Press, explaining that she had to participate in a march supporting same sex marriage, which she felt was a gift she owed, in the name of human rights, to her daughter. Finally, Carmen Agra Deedy regaled us with the story of how Martina the Beautiful Cockroach<\/em> came to her in the voice of her mother during a hot Georgia storytelling session in a large school auditorium which had just been invaded by a large flying cockroach. The story was the only way to calm the children. <\/p>\n

The Celebraci\u00ed\u00b3n ended with music: Suni Paz led us in Spanish and English in a sing-along about the freedom to fly, think, speak, and read, Yolanda Valent\u00ed\u00adn sang a beautiful solo, and the Rhythmo Mariachi Kids played and sang \u201cLos Colores\u201d\u009d for the audience, then serenaded the authors, with Yuyi Morales\u2019s son also playing a guitar.<\/p>\n

Book signing followed. Included among the books were not only the Pura Belpr\u00e9 authors\u2019 books but also Luc\u00ed\u00ada Gonz\u00ed\u00a1lez\u2019s and \u00a0Lulu Delacre\u2019s The Storyteller\u2019s Candle: La velita de los cuentos<\/em>, a biography of the Puerto Rican-born New York City librarian Pura Belpr\u00e9, which the author and illustrator had created to honor the first librarian to promote the passing on of Latino\/a cultural heritage to children through her retelling of Puerto Rican folktales. Proceeds from the sale of the books will go toward support of the award.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

–Judy Lechner<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve just returned from the Pura Belpr\u00e9 Celebraci\u00ed\u00b3n where we honored Margarita Engle, the author of\u00a0 The Poet Slave of Cuba, a biography of Francisco Manzano; Yuyi Morales the artist and Marisa Montes the author of Los Gatos Black on Halloween; Carmen T. Bernier-Grand, author of Frida Viva La Vida! Long Live Life!; Maya Christina Gonzalez My Colors My World\/Mis Colores, Mi Mundo ; Ra\u00ed\u00bal Col\u00ed\u00b3n, illustrator of Monica Brown\u2019s My Name is Gabito; and Carmen Agra Deedy author of Martina the Beautiful Cocroach: A Cuban Folktale. It was a joyful event, which started with Suni Paz\u2019s singing and maracas followed by REFORMA president Mario Ascencio and ALSC president Jane Marino\u2019s welcoming words and Jean Hatfield, the chair of the Pura Belpr\u00e9 Committee\u2019s introduction\u00a0to the award and the authors and illustrators. What made the event truly special was that each of the authors and illustrators said something heart-felt and memorable….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":78,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[22,61,34,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-childrens-literature","category-diversity","category-awards","category-partnerships"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/78"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}