>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
[ Silence ]
>> Good afternoon and thank you for joining us
at the Library of Congress.
I'm John Cole, I'm the Director of the Library Center for the Book
which is -- its reading and literacy promotion arm, and we have a network
of state centers around the country to help promote books and reading.
We have organizational partners and here at the Library of Congress,
we are in large part responsible for the National Book Festival.
So as you can imagine, we're very busy right now.
We also have this wonderful program called "Books and Beyond"
which features writers of articles -- of articles --
of books of special interest to the Library of Congress
and our speaker today is someone who has been at -- to the Library.
She, Pam, was part of our 2003 National Book Festival
and we're pleased to have her here, and our event is co-sponsored
with the Hispanic Division and Georgette Dorn is right here,
and both Hispanic and the Center for the Book are working together
with Julie Kline and the University of Wisconsin
at Milwaukee for tomorrow's event.
So I hope some of you are able to join us in the --
in the Mumford Room -- correct -- for tomorrow's 2001 Americus Award
for Children's and Young Adult Literature.
And guess what?
Pam Munoz Ryan is one of the winners and she will be there tomorrow
as well, along with Willie Perdomo and we hope that you can join us.
We're starting with an informal Continental Breakfast about 9:30,
and speakers will follow.
A word about our event today, Pam has agreed to make a presentation
about her new book and we will have a question
and answer period following.
We are taping this event for future possible webcast presentation
and we hope that you will both turn off all things electronic and also,
if you're willing to ask questions, you are giving us permission
if we proceed with the webcast, which we hope to --
to be part of our webcast.
So we thank you for this dialog that's going
on about books and new books.
There also is a FaceBook page that --
for the Books and Beyond
which features both past talks and future talks.
And it's another way that we are able to promote new books
that were -- that are part of the interest of the Library of Congress
and the Center for the Book.
A final little plug about the Center for the Book, we're very proud
that two years ago we were asked by Dr. James Billington
who is the Librarian of Congress to be in charge
of the very first Young Readers Center in the Library of Congress.
And it opened two years ago and it's in the Jefferson Building
which is our great historical building, opened in 1897.
It has three restored rooms which were done
by the architect of the Capitol.
It's a center for reading for folks under 16 as long
as they have an adult with them, and this is quite a breakthrough
for the Library of Congress.
It's both a reading-aloud center, a media center,
a place where Internet connections can be made to kid-friendly sites
and in the media portion, we like to feature for example, tele --
webcasts from -- or really videos that were taken
by famous children's authors at the National Book Festival.
So, I wanted to point that out and to roll that into sort of a new ball
of the youth activities that are being developed by the Library
of Congress which is a new -- a new effort and you are part of it.
[Pages turning] Let me turn
to a brief introduction of Pam Munoz Ryan.
As I mentioned, she has been to the Library for the --
at the 2003 Book Festival.
She's also been to the White House Easter Egg Roll.
She is a former teacher and I -- who went to --
who taught and then decided to stop teaching
and to raise her own family.
Went back to grad school and what I got
and you may mention this a little more was you were persuaded
to become a writer by a professor at graduate school.
And we are all very thankful to that professor because her career
since she's become a writer has really skyrocketed,
and she's published many books in many different areas.
Books both for adults but of course,
she's here for her work for young people.
She's actually written more than 30 books
for young people including the award-winning Esperanza Rising,
Riding Freedom and Paint the Wind.
She is the National Education Association's recipient of the Civil
and Human Rights Award, the Virginia Hamilton Award
for Multi-Cultural Literature and two-time winner
of the Willa Cather Literary Award.
So it's with great pleasure that I welcome for a long weekend
at the Library of Congress, Pam Munoz Ryan.
Pam...   >> [Applause] Thank you.
Thank you.   It's so nice to be here.
Thank you for coming today.   I appreciate it.
It is a long weekend for me, I mean I'm from San Diego so [chuckle] flew
in yesterday, flying home tomorrow night, but a pleasure to be back
in D.C., and especially to be back at the Library of Congress.
I have fond memories about the first time that I came here
because that year, for the National Book Festival,
they had a black-tie dinner in -- in the foyer of the Jefferson Building
and it was quite festive.
I remember that Julie Andrews was the -- one of the hosts and --
or one of the speakers and a beautiful orchestra.
And I -- I remember standing in this --
just historic and beautiful building feeling like I was either
in a James Bond movie or in the book,
Bel Canto before the terrorists come in.
[Chuckle] Anyway it was just a really lovely moment and so grateful
for the National Book Festival.
I mean I grew up during a time when there was no such thing.
So to see it evolve, to see it evolve in Texas,
the Texas Book Festival and what happened here in D.C. is very,
very gratifying for a reader.
I'm going to give you a little background about myself and then,
give you the opportunity to ask questions and certainly
if I'm showing something and you just want to stop,
I mean in a small group like this, we can do that.
You can say, "Wait, can I ask something?"
And I'm happy to do that.
But I'll get started and give you a little background.
I grew up in Bakersfield, California.
This is a land of dry-heat, clickety sprinklers, swamp coolers,
drippy popsicles, and lugs of grapes on kitchen tables during the summer.
I picked plums, peaches, apricots, nectarines, almonds and pecans
from backyard trees and every year in August, I watch the grapes lay
down on the ground to make -- who knows?
Not wine, no -- raisins.
One time I said this to a group of children and I was someplace
like Tennessee and I said, "What do you think they lay the grapes
down on the ground to make?"
And oh, everybody had some suggestions
and finally a little boy's hand shot up.
And I said, "What?
They lay the grapes down on the ground to dry them into what?"
[Group laughter] So tomatoes and enormous zucchini appeared
on our doorstep from neighbors' gardens and for weeks,
my grandmothers' kitchens were warm and sugary from the steam
of canning jars and hot preserves.   Not much has changed.
Now this is what my kitchen looks like every summer.
I was allowed to start kindergarten early
because both of my parents worked.
My father drove a delivery truck and my mother was a clerk
at a high-school library.
So when my mother took me to elementary school when I was four,
pleading her case for an early start and an answer
to her daycare problems, the school secretary looked me up and down
and said, "Sure, she can start.   She's a big girl.
She'll do just fine."
So as a result of that, I was always the very youngest in my class,
painfully the youngest and even though I was tall enough,
I wasn't always confident and I was quiet and mindful
and extremely naive and young for my age.
Opposed to my lack of hierarchy at school, at home I was the oldest
of three sisters and also,
the oldest of 23 cousins on my mother's side.
Away from school, I was that girl, the boss-kid.
You know the one, the one that makes all the rules.
My husband says not much has changed [chuckle].
I'm still the boss-kid of my own stories.
In the anonymity of a large extended family,
I was raised with a priceless gift.
Foreign from our socio-economic conditions,
in a diverse neighborhood where in most cases, both parents worked,
the gift of benevolent neglect.
I knew I was loved, but my job was to go play.
There was money -- there was no money for sleepover summer camps
or private lessons, although I dreamed of horseback riding lessons.
Instead I had what today is considered a rare commodity,
something in which many ways fueled my future writing
or at least my imagination.
I had an unchoreographed childhood where I was often left
to my own resources to create my own worlds.
I still create my own worlds but now in books.
And by the way, I was only partially able to give my children
that unchoreographed childhood [chuckle].
I didn't discover the public library until fifth grade,
until the summer before fifth grade.
We had moved across town and we were the new family in the neighborhood
and the Maxwell's lived next door.
They had three girls, all younger than me too and again,
my boss-kid persona prevailed.
But it was Wanda, the mother of the three girls
who probably influenced what I call my recreational reading life
the most.
And the reason was that Wanda didn't take back her Pepsi bottles
after she drank Pepsi out of the glass bottles.
There was a sea, an ocean of Pepsi bottles,
empty Pepsi bottles in her garage.
And one day she said to me, she was friendly,
I was new in the neighborhood and she said, "You know,
if you ever want to take you know, a six-pack of those down and turn them
in for the deposit, you know, feel free.
Just come over and get them."
So, starting that summer about twice a week, I would take two six-packs
of empty Pepsi bottles, hang one on each handle bar --
bar of my bike and ride to Green Frog Market.
Here's Green Frog during the big remodel [background talking].
Notice the neon frog on top of the store.
It lit up at night with the words, "Howdy Folks".
The store's motto was, 'Green Frog Market, always a leap ahead'.
[Background chuckling] So by the way, it's still there.
I'd ride my bike to Green Frog and turn in the two six-packs of bottles
and buy as many packages of Sweet Tarts, Big Hunks,
and Abba Zaba candy bars as I could get for the return money.
At that point, I had the moral dilemma.
If I went home, I would have to share with my sisters.
Sure, I could ride around for an hour,
but it's Bakersfield in the summer.   Its 107 degrees outside [chuckle].
We had just moved.   I didn't have any friends to visit.
So where could I go to eat in private without having to share?
Better yet, where could I go that was air-conditioned?
I rode my bike just a few blocks
to the East Bakersfield Branch Library on Baker Street.
I pulled a few books off the shelves in the Children's Section
to look official and found a cubby in the stacks.
Of course, I was soon running to the shelves for more.
Justin Morgan Had a Horse, Black Beauty,
Swiss Family Robinson, Treasure Island.
It was summertime, air-conditioning, a book, and an Abba Zaba --
it doesn't get much better than that [chuckle].
I knew as early as high school that someday I wanted
to have a profession that had something to do with books
but it never occurred to me to try to write them.
I wanted to be close to books.   So I went away to college,
to San Diego State University and I became a teacher.
My first job, only weeks after graduation,
was as the Red Cross Coordinator for all of the Vietnamese
and Cambodian Play Schools
on the U.S. Navy Relocation Camp on Camp Pendleton.
After the relocation, I became a bi-lingual Head Start teacher.
It wasn't until some years later, after I was married
and after my four children were born, that I went back to school
to get my Master's Degree.
And a professor asked me if I'd ever done any professional writing.
It was then that a seed was planted and I began to write,
on my IBM Selectric Typewriter, whose claim to fame was
that it could erase an entire line of type [chuckling].
So exciting, the idea that I might be able to write a book took hold
and I began to suspect that there was something
yet to be discovered about myself.
One thing led to another and I began to write for the reader I was,
when books made the most dramatic difference in my life.
I began to test my wings and write about women I admired.,
I began to examine my beginnings and the story
that parallels my grandmother's immigration from Mexico.,
My grandmother emigrated from Mexico around 1930.
When she emigrated, she ended up at Di Giorgio Farms
in the early '30s before the Federal Government came in,
before John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath time.
In the late '30s, all
of the farm-owned labor camps were segregated.
There was the Japan Camp, there was the Philipino Camp,
there was Camp Eight [phonetic] for the Okies,
and there was the Mexican Camp.
My mother was born in the Mexican Camp.
On her birth certificate, on the line that is reserved for the name
of a hospital are the words Di Giorgio Farms.
When I was invited to the National Book Festival the first time,
I brought my mother with me and at that time there was a breakfast
at the White House and you could bring a guest.
So my mom came with me and I remember standing in the line to go
through Security to get into the White House and my mom
of course, was so excited.
I mean she -- I think she told everybody
in Bakersfield before we left --
before she left that where she was going.
And sometimes, you know, during auspicious moments in our lives,
our minds will race us back to our beginnings and our belongings.
But as we're standing on the side of the White House waiting to go in,
she kind of got this very far away look and she was kind of just --
I could tell that she was thinking about something.
I said, "Mom, what are you thinking?"
She said, "I don't know.
For some reason, I've been thinking about Di Giorgio Farms and to think
when I was a little girl that I was born there and grew up there
for a few years of my life.
And to think that now, I'm going to the White House
for breakfast with my daughter."
So really, when people ask me about some of the more poignant things
that have happened to me in my career as a writer,
I have to say that taking my mother to the White House for --
at the National Book Festival was really -- tops the list [chuckle].
I mind my belongings growing up in a big family
and a noisy family [chuckle] where we all gathered
at my grandmother's house for celebrations.
I explored my feelings about growing up half-Mexican and to consider what
that might be like for children today.
I began to examine my emotions about my lost sister
who unfortunately inspired the character of Skyla.
And I found women who were kindred spirits to my other characters
and for whom all people should be proud.
I wrote to fulfill a childhood desire to learn to ride.
It took me over 40 years to make that dream come true,
to become something I'd never been before.
And I began to write because I couldn't resist,
because the story found me.
In 2005, the Ministry of Education in Chile invited me to come to Chili
to speak at -- in schools there.
And before I went, I brushed up on some Neruda.
I had read some of his works as early as high school.
I read Gabriela Mistral.   I read some early Allende.
I was going to their homeland.
So why shouldn't I read some of their books before I went?
While I was there, I became intrigued with the childhood
of someone who ultimately --
ultimately became one of Chile's most renowned native sons
and my book The Dreamer is the story of that boy, Nephanerias
and it is set into Moco, Chile.
I came home from that trip and within a few weeks,
I was at the American Library Association Conference,
and I had a signing time with Jon Muth who many
of you I'm sure are familiar with his Zen Shorts books,
wonderful writer and illustrator.
And so Jon and I were there very early in the morning.
We had the same publisher and we were signing stock
for one of the book sellers.
And we were catching up on each other's lives and --
and I had told him that I had just come home from Chili,
and that I was very intrigued with Neruda's childhood.
And he said, "Oh, I need to tell you a story.
I need to tell you the story about the hole in the fence."
And he related to me that incident in Neruda's life when an unknown boy
on the other side passed Neruda a gift through the hole in the fence.
And Jon told me that he often uses this as an analogy when he speaks
to illustrators about how we're always as artists of one sort
or another passing our gifts through holes in fences.
So I became enormously intrigued with that story.
It had so many premises of --
for a story for a book and one thing led to another.
I went to my editor and began discussing the prospect
of The Dreamer.
The book is illustrated by two-time Caldecott Honor Recipient
and MacArthur Fellow, Peter Seis.
I -- when we talked about ill -- when my editor and the art director
and the creative director talked about having parts
of the book illustrated, I couldn't imagine who they would ask.
But when Peter's name was suggested, after that I couldn't think
of anybody else [chuckle] who could possibly be right and was of course,
naturally thrilled and just rather elated when he was chosen.
Neftali was painfully shy, so much so that he had physical reactions
when he had to confront someone face to face.
He had a severe stutter and was embarrassed by it and as a result,
often retreated into his own fantastical imaginations.
He was -- and was desperate to please his dictatorial
and sometimes cruel father.
The Dreamer is about Neftali's journey away from his fears.
It is a story of a boy and how he made order out of personal chaos
by escaping into books, by escaping
into his imagination and the natural world.
He marveled at nature and was distracted
and entirely preoccupied by it.
He was obsessed about collecting objects from the natural world;
leaves, shells from his forays in the Pacific Ocean,
skulls and skeletons and then that event in his young life
which seduced me to write The Dreamer.
The incident of the hole in the fence when an unknown child
in the backyard next door passed him an old toy sheep,
that didn't look anything like this beautiful pristine one
that my editor gave me after I wrote the book,
through an opening in the wood planks.
Neftali reciprocated with a treasured pinecone,
a possession from the forest.
He never discovered who passed him the sheep
or to whom he passed the pinecone but,
that exchange had a profound effect on him and was symbolic
of what Neftali would accomplish later in his life.
At 16, he changed his name to Pablo Neruda and became
who many consider the most widely read poet in the world,
who passed his art to us from the other side of the fence.
Neruda's love for the natural world never waned.
Many of his odes and poems reflect this affection.
As he grew older, writing in green ink became one
of his idiosyncrasies.
He thought that green was the color of Esperanza, hope.
For that reason, The Dreamer is printed entirely in green ink.
After he moved away from home, Neruda lost the toy sheep
in a house fire, probably in his late 20s.
But even as a man in his 50s, wherever he traveled he looked
in toy's windows for a sheep exactly
like the one he had when he was a child.
But he never found one.
Even then, as a man, he still reflected and wrote
about that moment during his childhood when he exchanged gifts
through a hole in the fence.
For him it became a lifelong reminder that people known
or unknown were all somehow connected.
[Clicking sound]   [ Silence ]
>> Neruda felt that rhythm was a presence in his life.
I wanted the reader to hear the call of the Chickow bird,
I wanted the reader to hear the sound of the printing press
and hear the persistent rain, that rhythm that became almost
like a soundtrack in Neruda's life.
And the other thing that I wanted to do was convey his feeling
that poetry was a presence from which he could not rest himself.
The book is divided into four sections [pages turning]
and I will read those short sections for you.
I am poetry, waiting to seize the poet.
I ask the questions for which all answers exist.
I choose no one.   I choose everyone.
Come closer if you dare.
I am poetry lurking in dabbled shadow.
I am the confusion of root and gnarled branch.
I am the symmetry of insect, leaf and a bird's outstretched wings.
[Page turning] I am poetry prowling the blue, tempting my prey
with fish, shell and sky.
From beneath the eyelids of the deep, I seek the unsuspecting heart.
I am poetry surrounding the dreamer.
Ever present, I capture the spirit, enslave the reluctant pen
and become the breath on the writer's only road.
[ Background noise ]
Neruda wrote, "That exchange during my childhood brought home
to me a precious idea, that all of humanity is somehow together.
Just as I once left the pinecone by the fence,
I have since left my words on the door of so many people.
Maybe the small and mysterious exchange
of gifts remained inside me,
deep and indestructible, giving my poetry light."
>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.