>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
[ Pause ]   >> Georgette Dorn: Good afternoon.
My name is Georgette Dorn and I'm the Chief of the Hispanic Division,
and it's a great pleasure to welcome all of you here.
And above all, I want to thank Chair Gonzales, Outreach Coordinator
of Latin American Studies at Vanderbilt University
for planning this wonderful event, as well as Tulane University.
And I am so happy to see here, Julie Kline,
who was the originator of the Americas Award.
And I think one of the...
[applause] ...one of the earliest awards was presented here in 1995.
I think it was the 2nd.
So many of you have seen the Hispanic Division
and the Hispanic Reading Room;
that is the oldest foreign area reading room in the library;
and our collection of Spain, Portugal, the Caribbean,
Latin America is -- and Hispanic Latinos in the U.S. --
is the most extensive collection anywhere in the world.
We have 13 million items and 3 million books
about the entire area in many disciplines.
And we began collecting Hispanic-Latino materials
in all fields -- geography, history, literature --
from the earliest days in the 1920s when Archer Huntington,
the philanthropist, began giving money
to make this institution the best Latin American collection.
In those days there were no Latinos, no Chicanos.
We call them Hispanic Americans and we called that vast area that used
to be Mexico or Spain before that, the Spanish Borderlands.
So to do either history or literature studies of Latinos
in the U.S., this is the ideal place.
Thank you very much for coming.   [ Applause ]
>> John Cole: Well, good afternoon.
I'm the second Library of Congress host.
I represent the Center for the Book.
My name is John Cole and I'm the director of the center
which is the reading and literacy promotion arm
for the Library of Congress.
We were created by Daniel Boorstin when he was Librarian
of Congress way back in 1977; and he fingered me as a bookie
and a librarian and someone interested in the history
of the Library of Congress to undertake the center,
and we have grown through the years.
We're a private/public partnership and the Library
of Congress pays our five salaries now and it took a while to get
to five, and those of you
who visited the Young Readers Center today with us realize
that it's a wonderful organization and part of the Center for the Book;
but we also do have to rely not only on our one full-time employee,
but on volunteers and interns.
But that's what makes it exciting and we had over 40,000 visitors
in the young reader center last year which is really quite remarkable,
and one of these days the Library of Congress is going to wake
up to its full value and certainly appreciate it;
but we're still looking for partners and for help
for the young reader center.
Georgette, through the Hispanic Division and the Center
for the Book have had the privilege of working
with the Americas Awards helping to host them here for a number of years
and Georgette has already thanked Julie for her initiation
of the award ceremony and really initiation of the Library
of Congress' co-sponsorship.
And one of the nice things about being at the Library of Congress
and having many different partners and relationships,
the Center for the Book, for example,
has stimulated a state center in every state and those of you
who don't know about your state center, I would --
could be in touch with me or directly off our website
with the state center to see if there is a young reader's component
to your state center, there may or not be.
We also have more than 80 organizations
that are nonprofit partners.
Many of them are literacy groups and many
of them are early childhood groups
and we also have enlisted four government agencies, IMLS, NEH,
NEA and -- well, let's say three permanent ones --
that also helps support the National Book Festival
which is another Center for the Book Library of Congress project.
It's now called the Library of Congress National Book Festival.
And I have met several of the people --
authors who have either won the awards
or are all perspective candidates, of course,
for possible fall appearances at the National Book Festival,
so we have lots of different relationships going on
and it's a pleasure to be with people
who love books and appreciate them.
And I'm especially pleased that we've now moved
to have additional universities as partners in the Americas Awards
and it's really wonderful to have both Vanderbilt and Tulane here,
and I am now going to turn the program over to both Claire Gonzalez
from Vanderbilt and to Denise Woltering from Tulane.
And they represent as everyone here knows,
I think Latin American centers at those universities and the alliance
with the Library of Congress' groups is both satisfying and something
that we look forward to expanding.
So with that I'd like to have both Claire and Denise come up
and I'm pleased to turn the afternoon over to the two of you.
Let's give them a hand [applause] for taking the time.
[ Applause ]   [ Pause ]
>> Claire Gonzalez: Good afternoon.
I'm Claire Gonzalez from Vanderbilt University, and I first want
to thank John Cole and Georgette Dorn for the Center of the Book.
We -- and welcome to the 2012 Americas Award.
On behalf of the Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs,
Latin American Studies resources at Tulane University,
and Vanderbilt University, we want to welcome you today
and we're thrilled that you're with us.
I'm going to tell you a little bit about --
a little bit of history about the Americas Award.
It was founded in 1993 by Julie Kline who's with us today -- Julie.
[Applause] We're going to talk about you quite a bit today, Julie,
so just, you know, bear with us.   >> [Inaudible]
>> But yeah, [inaudible] [laugh].
Julie is assistant director at the Evaluation and Public Engagement
at the Center for Latin American Caribbean Studies
at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
After almost 20 years, this year Julie is retired from her duties
as coordinator and for the first time, Denise Woltering
and I have had the pleasure of following in her footsteps.
We're truly honored to do that.
The Americas Award is given up to two books --
up to two books each year
and the books are selected for a couple of things.
They're selected for their distinctive literary quality,
their cultural contextualization, exceptional integration of text,
illustration and design, and their potential for classroom use.
The goal of the Americas Award is to reach beyond geographic borders
and to focus instead on cultural heritages within the hemisphere.
This year, the Americas Award Review Committee was comprised of teachers,
faculty and community activists from lots of different places,
from Oregon, Louisiana, Illinois, Connecticut and Washington,
D.C. Dr. Ruth Quiroa was chair of our committee
Ruth? [Applause] Ruth is Associate Professor of Education
and she is Director of the Language and Literacy program
at National Louis University in Illinois.
The process is something like this.
The -- in the fall, books begin to be submitted.
Starting in the next month or so, books will begin to be submitted.
And beginning in January, the committee gathered
and will gather again via Skype and conference call and a series
of meetings in which they determine the winner, the honorable mentions
and the commended titles.
And those last two are very important and then we'll be talking
about those -- the commended list and the honorable mentions as well.
The conversations this year, which this is the first time Denise
and I had the pleasure of being a part of those,
the conversations were enlightening; they were insightful.
They were at times spirited and they showed the passion that all
of the committee members felt about the diverse cultures
of Latin America that were represented.
Denise and I thank very much the hard work of the committee
and the care and, as I say, passion that they put
into choosing this year's winners,
honorable mentions and commended titles.
We have additionally here with us, Barbara D'Ambruoso, who is here.
Barbara has also served on the committee so I would
like to recognize her as well.   [Applause]
And at this time, I would like to turn the program
over to Denise Woltering who will tell you a bit more
about the Consortium of Latin American Studies
who sponsors the Americas Awards and some of the programs --
the outreach programs that are being developed around it.
Thank you.   [Applause]
>> Denise Woltering: Good afternoon.
Denise Woltering came in this morning from New Orleans
and I'm very happy to be here with you to share our beautiful books
which you see them passing behind us.
>> I'd like to take a moment now to explain the role of the consortium,
or CLASP, just to familiarize yourself with -- where --
kind of the goal of the award.
The mission is for public engagement, and so CLASP consists
of over 70 Latin American studies programs across the country as well
as K through 12 individual members.   Its goal is to promote all facets
of Latin American studies throughout the world.
The broad range of activities include the encouragement
of research, funding and professional workshops,
advancement of citizen outreach activities, and the development
of teaching aids in the classroom.   That one is an important one.
The Americas Award is one of CLASP's most important programs
as it encourages the exploration of themes of Latin America
in the classroom and at home; themes such as finding a sense of place,
celebrating indigenous past and present, the African diaspora,
contemporary issues facing Latinos, maintaining
and celebrating cultural traditions, immigration and migrant life
within the United States and many more.
A unique element of the Americas books are --
is its ability to be used in the classroom.
The award emphasizes potential for classroom use.
CLASP offers outreach activities such as teacher workshops,
book clubs, community festivals, all to celebrate these books.
Educators have developed and continue to develop pre-K
through 12 curricula in collaboration with Americas books.
If you're interested in learning about any of these resources,
and as you can see here we have a teacher workshop tomorrow.
Please let us know.
We have some CLASP brochures in the back.
This year's program features a special K
through 12 teacher workshop tomorrow at Busboys and Poets
if you're interested; it's in collaboration --
you'll see all of our sponsors in collaboration with Teaching
for Change, the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee
and Henry Holt has also contributed greatly.
Tulane and Vanderbilt are coordinating this workshop in hopes
to engage teachers and classrooms
in the issues especially during Hispanic heritage month
around these books.
Another unique and important elements they make this award is the
honorable mention and commended titles list as Claire mentioned.
Every year, the Americas committee selects its award winners while also
crafting a list of honorable mentions and commended titles.
This list has served school librarians, teachers and parents
around the country to discover beautiful stories
to fill their libraries, classrooms and their homes.
This list of commended titles is circulated every year and includes
in an annotated bibliography to highlight the beauty of each book.
This year's honorable mention and commended titles will be introduced
by Barbara D'Ambruoso who's been a Spanish teacher
in Connecticut for over 25 years.   [ Applause ]
[ Pause ]
>> Barbara D'Ambruoso: I want to thank you all
for coming this afternoon.
It's certainly been my pleasure to serve
in the Americas Award Committee for the last year.
Thanks, too, to Denise and to Claire and to Ruth and to Julie
for all the work that they've done in the past and continue to do.
And finally, a special thank you to the Library of Congress people
for their so generously hosting us today.
So as well as deciding which books would receive the Americas Award,
the committee found three other books
which they thought were worthy of special recognition.
One of the two books to receive honorable mention is the "Queen
of Water," a fictionalized memoir of Maria Virginia Farinango,
called Virginia in the book, who co-authored the work
with her friend, Laura Resau.
In a voice that's by turn poetic, probing, binding, nave,
but always wonderfully descriptive, we look closely
through Virginia's eyes at Ecuador's class structure,
as well as the cultural dislocation that native peoples face
when they try to move up into the mestizo world.
But we also catch a glimpse of the glowing sense of --
growing sense of native pride -- indigenous pride --
and of others taking an interest in the indigenous communities.
So Virginia, sold or given, she was not sure,
as a child to serve an abusive mestizo family -- couple --
eventually seeks to pass as a mestiza.
When years later she returns home to her family,
she's not only ashamed of her roots.
She finds that she's lost her ability
to speak her Quichua language and she's also repulsed
by the living conditions that she finds in her family's village.
Determined to achieve a better life through education,
she finds herself caught between two worlds.
In the end, she learns to embrace the Quichua culture
which she once rejected and she finds out living
between two worlds offers her a unique perspective
and even a certain freedom of action.
Our other honorable mention recipient is Guadalupe Garcia
McCall's memoire, "Under the Mesquite."
The book takes its title from the site of choice for the teller
of this tale, Lupita, who likes to sit
and enjoy writing her favorite past time under this mesquite tree.
And as the story unfolds, we see that Lupita's family is as tenacious
and as resilient as this legendary tree species.
Migrants from Mexico, they face the challenges of adapting
to a new life while remaining true to their roots.
The story revolves around the mother's losing battle
against cancer and the family's Herculean efforts to deal with it.
While pappy is preoccupied with eking out a living and seeing to it
that mommy gets her chemotherapy treatments, Lupita assumes the role
of caring for her seven younger siblings while
at the same time trying to live as ordinary life
as possible for a teenage girl.
The author uses free verse to touchingly portray Hispanic culture
in this tale of close-knit family whose members rejoice together
in the good times, pray together for better times
and unselfishly sacrifice for the good of all.
For them, "familia" trumps all else.
Finally, the awards committee would like to commend Winifred Conkling's
"Sylvia and Aki," a work of historical fiction,
for its sensitive portrayal of the events in the lives
of two young girls, one Mexican American,
who's caught up in the indignities of school segregation,
and the other a Japanese-American girl who's forced to live
in an internment camp during World War II.
The two girls tell their stories in alternating chapters,
each one opening with a proverb from her parents' respective culture.
And through circumstances brought on by the war, they come to know
and appreciate their similarities as well as a particular injustice
at the heart of each other's situation.
Sylvia Mendez' father's legal challenge to racial segregation
in California schools was a precursor to the end
of school segregation in the United States.
And now, may I present Ruth Quiroa,
Chair of the Americas Awards Committee.
[ Applause ]   [ Pause ]
>> Ruth Quiroa: Thank you for coming this afternoon.
I'm honored to have the opportunity to introduce Monica Brown,
a 2012 recipient of the Americas Award for Children's
and Young Adult Literature for the book, "Pablo Neruda --
Poet of the People," published by Henry Holt and Company in 2011.
In preparing for this
and the subsequent introductions I'll make today,
I search for interviews, websites and other resources to be able
to better speak to each author and illustrator's backgrounds.
As a result, I was highly impressed to learn
of Monica's strong dedication to provide children
with inspiring books that can serve to instill pride
in Latino/Latina heritage.
Many of her biographies feature individuals
who experience challenging beginnings,
yet still achieve greatness to a strong belief
in their own abilities and goals.
Monica's other biographical books focus on "Celia Cruz,"
"Dolores Huerta," and "Cesar Chavez," "Gabriel Garcia Marquez,"
and "Gabriela Mistral"; as well as a book based on the librarian
with a burro, "Luis Soriano."
Monica reports in all of the research I did --
hopefully I found everything correctly --
that she conducts rigorous research and it's very apparent in her books
as she's preparing to write a new book
and her findings provide great inspiration for her writing process.
In so doing, she considers the shape and structure of each book
and how it will be told, from the present, or looking back in time.
She also seeks for recurring images, rhythms or themes
in an individual's life that would be important to weave into a story.
Monica has written 11 picture books for children with nine of these
in bilingual, English/Spanish formats.
She also writes scholarly text for her other job as a professor
of English at Northern Arizona University where she specializes
in U.S. Latino literature and multicultural literature.
Much of Monica's writing is inspired
by her own Peruvian American heritage together
with her commitment to produce high quality literature for children,
especially Latino children.   For example.
the book, "Marisol McDonald Doesn't Match"/"Marisol McDonald No
Combina," is based on her own experiences of being,
as she said, mismatched in life.
She considers herself to have been a child of many cultures
with the global family and notes
that her mother called her a citizen of the world.
Like the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, Monica seems to have a passion
for sharing themes of hope and peace.
In the text, "Pablo Neruda," she is -- "Poet of the People," she is able
to present complex themes from his life
in an appealing manner for young children.
For example, she tells of Neruda's passion to write
about his surroundings and of his concern that the children
of Chile would share in its wealth and [inaudible].
Monica also emphasizes Neruda's commitment to social justice,
highlighting the way his poems honored workers struggling
for freedom.
It is sometimes difficult to present the realities of the past
to young children because not all of those realities are picture perfect.
Yet, Monica succeeds in the way she shares Neruda's goals and desires.
One particularly important statement from this book reads,
"Even when his poem made leaders angry, he would not be silenced
because he was a poet of the people."
Neruda's full biography including the reasons for his exile from Chile
and the impact of his poems across the world with their messages
of hope and dreams of peace will be easier for those same children
to understand later on in life
after reading this foundational information that's presented
in her beautiful picture book.
Therefore, on behalf of the review committee for the Americas Award
for Children's and Young Adult Literature, I am most pleased
to present Monica Brown, author of such a timely book
for students, parents and teachers.   Thank you.
[Applause]   [ Pause ]
>> Monica Brown: Thank you so, so very much for this beautiful honor.
We all know the many amazing things that the Americas Award Committee
and that the CLASP programs do in communities and for children,
and for those working in communities with children
like librarians and teachers.   But I just have to say,
they do beautiful things for writers and artists.
When I give creative writing workshops and work
with younger writers, I tell them sometimes to become friends
with rejection and how -- what a joy that in their recognition
of these award-winning books and the honorable mentions
that we get a chance to celebrate and reflect and enjoy this gift
that we've been given which is the opportunity
to create literature for children.
And so thank you for this lovely gift.
One of the reasons -- the many, many reasons the Americas Award is
so special to me is, as Ruth said, I am the child of two continents,
the daughter of a North American father and a South American mother.
And growing up, my mother did indeed say that I was a citizen
of the world and I suppose that all my writing, both as a scholar
and as a children's author, has been an attempt to celebrate
and represent what that means to me, being a daughter of the Americas.
Another reason that it holds a really special place in my heart is
because it helped launch my career along with an amazing friendship
and continued collaboration.   Let me see if this works.
So in 2006, I was here at the Library of Congress with my mother,
Isabel Brown, and my sister who's here and my two daughters
and it was -- I was given this award
for the very first children's book I published,
and Rafael Lopez was the illustrator,
the first children's book he published.
And it was so special having my mother with me and my daughters
and one of my daughters Juliana is here with me today, also joined us.
And Rafael brought his mother and his son, Santiago and his wife.
And in this room, in this amazing place, we had three generations
and both of our mothers were born in Mexico and Peru, respectively,
and it was an amazing celebration.
Now, my mother is very much in my thoughts today
because she can't be with me.
She passed away a little over two years ago, but, of course,
she is here because I brought her with my daughter and my sister,
and I have decided to have this be, yet another honor.
She loved Washington, D.C. because for many reasons, in fact,
when I came for the Kennedy Center multicultural book festival,
she not only flew out the last trip she ever made out here,
but she sat behind me as I signed
and corrected my Spanish if I made a mistake.
[Laugh] So this is my mother and I wanted to share a little bit
about her with you because there is no other person
that is more responsible for my success as a children's writer,
except perhaps my own two daughters that inspired me
to write in the first place.
So this is a picture of my mother on her first communion in Piura,
Peru where she was born, and of some of my --
her cousins and my aunt and she's on the far right
on the family farm there with the little pigtails.
And here is a picture of her in Peru and I was just
in this living room -- my Tia Suzy and Tia [inaudible] living room --
when she took my children to Peru for the first time
and this is just a sense of how happy they always were together.
And she's standing in front of one her paintings.
She was an amazing artist and that's a really important connection I want
to make because to write children's books, it's the place where text
and art meet and I get to work with incredible artists like Julie,
the amazing Julie, who I hope this is just the first
of many collaborations.
And here's another painting of my mothers,
and this is really special to me.
I'm 42. She gave me this painting on my 40th birthday.
It was the last painting she gave me before she died,
and this painting is actually called "Tres Virgenes";
and I think it's very interesting that a painting entitled
"The Three Virgins" has an image of homes, you know.
And she was also a writer, my mom,
and I'm going to share just a little bit of a poem that she wrote,
and it's in Spanish so I apologize for non-Spanish speakers,
but I bet there's quite a few in this room.
So she wrote...   [ Foreign Language Spoken ]
So, what I want to say is that art and words and text create magic,
and they also cross borders, which, in my opinion, is --
or eliminate them and that's really what the Americas Award does, too.
It makes us realize that everyone
in this room were all children of the Americas.
And in that spirit, I had to share the books from last week where I got
to visit on behalf of the U.S. embassy as their guest
and representative, the country of my mother's birth.
My books have taken me all over with the state department to Panama
and via telecast to Ecuador but this was super special going
to the country where my mother was born.
And it's also, so many of these writers and books were donated
by my friends, Latino writers, one of whom is here today, Meg Medina,
and most of -- I asked for my friends at the last minute
to send a book or two and I promise I'd put them in the hands
of Peruvian children because I was going to meet --
I was going to visit some very, very, very impoverished schools.
And many sent one or two books and Meg sent six, so that was awesome.
And I gave talks with the Centro Cultural,
the bi-national centers supported by the embassy in Puno and Arequipa.
I visited, you know, and did presentations in Lima
and public talks, and I can tell you, these children all
over the world from every, you know, demographic.
And in fact, the children down in the --
up here and down to the right where one of the poorest public schools,
they only have running water 30 minutes a day.
And I did a presentation, we donated lots of books to the school;
and after the, you know, formal presentations to the kids,
they wanted to open the books and start reading that minute,
and these are children who could never have an $18 book or $19 book,
and it was an amazing experience.   And that's what all of you here do.
You put books in the hands of children and I think the folks
that work with the Americas Award Committee, Julie for so many years
and Claire and Denise and Ruth and Barbara, that's what you're doing.
You're in drawing attention to these books, these quality books,
you're putting them in the hands of more children, and so I really,
really thank you for that.
Now, I just want to conclude by saying something about the book
that Julie and I created together.
I chose "Pablo Neruda" for obvious reasons, but like him,
my whole career, my professional life has been around words,
first as a journalist, then as a scholar, and now creating a scholar
of Latino literature
and now creating Latino literature for children.
And, of course, writing this book was incredibly joyful
because my research in part was reading every single one
of his poems.
But the other thing I liked and admired about the life
of Pablo Neruda is the way he was not afraid to speak
out against injustice because I do feel very strongly that those of us
with a public platform have an obligation, an ethical obligation,
to speak out against injustice.
And I think we have many challenges facing our Latino community
around issues that have to do with education,
in poverty, in immigration.
And at the same time, we have a lot to celebrate and be proud of
and in continuing on our path.
And so I just want to read the last few pages of the book,
the beginning is a lot about his falling in love with language
and playing with language, and in the end is how we can be inspired
by his later life and what he did with this public platform
that was created out of his talent.
So I'm just going to read the first page and then I'm going
to read the last few pages.
"Once, there was a little boy named Neftali who loved wild things wildly
and quiet things quietly.
From the moment he could talk, Neftali surrounded himself
with words that whirled and swirled just like the river
that ran near his home in Chili."
This is one of my most favorite paintings of Julie's actually
and it hangs in my bedroom to inspire me in my own dreams.
"Pablo loved opposites, so we wrote about fire
and rain and spring and fall.
In the streets with his friends, Pablo saw joy
and sadness, so he wrote about both.   Pablo loved the stones of Chile.
He wrote about stones rolled by waves unto the beach
and stones polished by sand and salt.
He wrote about stones tumbling down the mountain tops and stones
in the hands of the stone cutters.
Pablo loved the sea and the feel of the sand beneath his feet.
He loved walking along the beach near his home in Chile.
He found starfish and seaweed, red crabs and green water.
He saw dolphins playing in the surf and rusty anchors washed ashore.
Pablo wrote about the children who played in the sea foam,
in the sands, skipping stones and chasing waves.
He wanted each child to share in Chile's wealth and hope.
Pablo had many homes.   One was in Spain, half a world away.
This home was called "The House of Flowers"
because of the red flowers blooming from every corner.
The house of flowers was always filled with dogs and people,
young and old, because above all things and above all words,
Pablo Neruda loved people.
Pablo loved mothers and fathers, poets and artists, children
and neighbors and has many friends around the world.
He opened his arms to them all.
When Pablo saw the coal miners working dangerous jobs
for little money, he was angry.
And when he saw that they were cold and hungry and sick,
he decided to share their story.
He joined those who fought for justice and wrote poems
to honor our workers who struggled for freedom.
And even when his poems made leaders angry, he would not be silenced
because he was a poet of the people.
When soldiers came to get him, Pablo hid in the homes of friends
and then escaped on a horse over the mountains of Chile.
Pablo Neruda was brave.
He wasn't afraid to share the story of Chile with the world.
Pablo's voice was heard across nations and oceans,
and from his poems grew flowers of hope and dreams of peace.
And so I leave all of you, and especially the members
of the Americas Award Committee and here at the Library of Congress,
the Center for the Book, with my heartfelt thanks
for supporting my work, which I truly hope brings children flowers
of hope, dreams of peace and the belief that their lives,
their culture, and their voices can be heard and celebrated.
Thank you very much.   [ Applause ]
[ Pause ]
>> An award to a picture book can truly never be presented
without its art.
A factor that is particularly true for the Pablo Neruda poet
of the people illustrated by artist, Julie Paschkis.
One glimpse of the cover with its eye-catching colors and English
and Spanish words bringing forth, flowing gently like a river
from the hand of a Nobel Prize poet entices the reader
to open its cover and linger inside.
In this book, Julie Paschkis created poems through art, concrete poetry
and circling and enveloping the story
in the illustrations both extending and deepening the meaning
of the text while capturing the readers imagination.
Words are everywhere, hidden in the flowers, woven into the essence
of trees, submerged beneath the depths of the earth and gurgling
in the water of the ocean.
These illustrations aptly capture the way Pablo Neruda encountered
words all around him from childhood on into his adult life;
words of beauty, of books, of freedom, comfort and love
that compelled him to write about injustices and to seek
to bring peace with his words.
Julie grew up in Pennsylvania, I found out, near Philadelphia,
where her parents encouraged their children
to read, draw and play outside.
Her own life journeys took to her a Germantown Friends School in Norway
and then to Cornell University and the School for American Craftsman.
Now residing in Seattle with her husband,
she has illustrated 27 books with more to come.
Like Monica, Julia also conducts meticulous research
that involves more than work in libraries and on the internet,
particularly for biographical works, which she feels require travel.
What a wonderful thing.
In the case of Pablo Neruda, Julie traveled to Chile so as
to be immersed in the setting and feel of his beloved country
and gain a sense for the context in which he wrote much of the poetry.
When creating a book, Julie feels
that the cover must tell the entire story in a way that grabs attention
and invites the reader to hold it and open it.
Now, when you get a new book and it's fresh and you just want
to hold it for a minute before you open it.
She first completes all interior illustrations before beginning work
on the cover, much the way an author may complete a manuscript prior
to writing with abstract, at least that's what I was thinking
when I read that.
As an educator, I appreciate the cover of Pablo Neruda
because it can promote much student discussion and inquiry prior
to reading while foreshadowing important aspects and images
from this poet's life -- nature, a book, a bird, a dove, and,
of course, the ever present words.
Once again, it gives me great pleasure to present Julie Paschkis
to you to today as the illustrator for this wonderful timely text,
and [inaudible] recognition by the Americas Award for Children's
and Young Adult Literature.   Thank you.
[ Applause ]   [ Pause ]
>> Julie Paschkis: Thank you so much.
I feel so happy and honored to be here to be part of this group
and to be in these beautiful buildings
and I can't thank you enough.   And we get this going here.
[ Pause ]
I want to talk to you today about our picture book and I want to talk
to you about what I brought to the book and also
about what the book brought to me.
This is a painting I did called "Playing with Words";
it's about a boater who's sort of floating on a sea
of words, all in English.
And I sent this to my editor, Reka Simonsen, along with this book
which I sent with a manuscript, and she rejected the manuscript
but she told me she loved the pictures,
and a few weeks later she sent me Monica's manuscript.
And the minute I read that first sentence which Monica read
and so beautifully, I knew I wanted to illustrate it and she asked
if I would illustrate it in that wordy style.
And I thought that was a great idea but I also thought that in order
to do that, it would have to be words in English and in Spanish
because Spanish was his primary language.
So pretty much the next day I signed up to start taking Spanish lessons
and I'm still working on it.   I have a ways to go but...
[applause].   Thank you.
And I always think of -- every time I get a chance
to illustrate a picture book, I think of it as a door in my life
and I can walk through that door.
And so I probably could've illustrated the book without going
to Chile, but I didn't know what it felt like.
I could look on the internet and see all these pictures,
but when I'm painting I want to be able to stylize it
and that goes beyond what you can see through the screen
of a computer or in a photograph.
I wanted to know what it felt like to be there.
So my husband, who's here with me today, and I went to Chile --
and we went to Neruda's three homes.
He had one in Santiago, one in Valparaiso and one at Ilsa Negra.
And here's just a sort of little selection of some of the pictures
that from when we were there, it was in 2009.
And I wanted to see the building.   I wanted to feel the air.
I wanted to see what his homes were like, what the plants were like.
We took lots of pictures.
This is the ocean outside of his house
at Isla Negra, and beautiful rocks.
Not in the picture, there's little sort of tea stand
where you could have tea and spend time with some
of the many stray dogs that were wandering on the beach.
[Laugh] These are three of the pictures from Isla Negra.
You might recognize that bell thing that I used
in the page about the children.
We weren't allowed to take pictures inside of his house,
but that's through the window
into the house he had just amazing collections.
In every one of his houses he had bazillions of objects and also a lot
of bars, so he really loved living and loved things.
[Laugh] So for each page -- so these are some
of the things the book brought me.
It brought me to the Spanish language.
It brought me to the poems of Neruda.
I also did what Veronica did and I just submerged myself in his poetry.
I had known about his love poems.
I knew his name but I didn't know the incredible amount of poems
that he had written, and so I just got as many as I could
and the whole time that I was working
on the book before actually painting, during painting all of it.
I would start every day reading his poems sort of struggling
through the Spanish side and then cheating and looking
at the English side to get them.
And every time I did an illustration, I would --
I drew the characters and left where I knew the sort
of flow of words would go.
Then I would harvest words from his poems that I thought related
to the content that Monica had on that page
and I would write just lists of words in English and in Spanish.
Then when I started to fill in the words,
I didn't know where everything would go and I just sort of start
at one end like "Nacio," [assumed spelling] I started there
because it's starting with his birth.
And then I just sort of kept going,
thinking about how each word connected to the word above it,
the word below it, the word next to it.
I like playing with the words, like "plummet" in English and "pluma"
in Spanish that the words bounced off each other
in terms of sound and meaning.
Neruda loved many, many things wildly; and he loved people,
he loved women, he loved Chile, he loved his politics.
He loved many things, but I think above all he loved that language
and he always knew just the right thing to say,
like when he was talking about "Cubo" [assumed spelling],
one time he said -- he took to it like a fish takes to water
and I just think he -- I tried to honor his love
of language in the pictures.
I also used his memoirs as a big source of research and his biography
and this is a picture about his teenage times and he was --
other kids teased him and threw acorns at him.
And on the tree on the left,
if you see the name Don Augusto Winter was a librarian
who had a big impact on him, and all the titles that are
in that tree were the books that that librarian gave him.
And then Gabriela Mistral had an enormous influence on him
and the center tree are the books that she told him to read.
And on the right hand tree are the other books that he came to himself
that made a big difference in his life.
So one thing that really struck me when we went
to Chile was how important poetry was in that culture.
They -- every person that I talked to - I've talked to a taxi driver,
or the person in a restaurant or the person at the hotel we were staying
and say why we're there and they're all like, "Oh, Neruda!
I love Neruda."
And I couldn't imagine a poet in this country having that kind
of widespread impact on the society.
At the airport, there was the Neruda smoke shop, and I went up
and said, "Oh, so he smoked?"
and they're like, "Oh yes, he loved to smoke."
And [laugh] I mean, everywhere was Neruda.
This was the ocean outside of his house and of all --
he wrote so many poems about so many things,
but the ones I love the most were the "Odes to Common Things,"
and he -- so this is -- all these objects were things that I sketched
when we went to visit his houses.
And throughout the book, most of them I just used only single words
like "azul" or "apple," but in "Ode to Common Things" he --
with all of these things he loves,
then he says "to say nothing of the hat."
So I had to include that whole phrase
because it was such a wonderful phrase.
And then, you know, he collected a giant shoe.
He had all kinds of costumes that he liked to wear.
So also natural objects, he had so many things.
This was from the House of Flowers, you just saw that; and for this one,
I put the poets that he loved and his friends and there's pictures
of them as well as there in the words
and also places that he went in Spain.
And Spain was I think a joyous time for him but also a tragic time.
It was a really a time of his political awakening.
And this was the page where he talks most directly about his political --
what he did politically and his passions for helping people.
And in his memoirs, he talks about when he first read the poems
to the workers and the amazing connection that he felt
to the people of Chile, and so I want to show that in the pictures.
And I did research through reading those books but also looking
on YouTube, at videos from those times and it was --
when I paint a party scene, I just get happier
and happier painting all these people smiling,
I tend to make the expressions as I paint them.
This one I just -- I was like dragging myself around the house
for weeks because it's so sad what was happening during those times
and the part that the United States played
in these politics was shameful.
We were on the wrong side of many things that were going on,
and so it was really difficult
to paint this illustration, but worth it, I think.
It ends with his poems going out into the world
and for this one I just googled all the bookstores around the world,
so there's the titles of -- every one of these words are just titles
of this books that have been published in English, in Spanish,
in Dutch, in French and Russian and Chinese.
All these are still out now in all those different languages,
I want to end with this slide and this is his house in Valparaiso,
which is up on top of a hill, and if you go to the top
of the house you can look out over the whole city
and out over the water.
And in that room on the very top they have a poem printed
out on a placard called "La Sebastiana," and it seems
to me a poem that he wrote about the house but also a great metaphor
for all creative exploration.
And I'm going to read you an excerpt of it
because it's a really long poem, so I'll just read part of it
and I'm going to read it in English.   It says...
"I built the house.   I made it first out of air.
Later, I raised its flag into the air and left it draped
from the firmament, from the stars, from light and from darkness.
It was a fable of cement, iron, glass, but it kept growing.
The windows grew and with a little more
with sticking the plans and working.
And digging in with knee and shoulder, it went on growing
into existence to where you could look through a window,
and it seemed with so many sacks, it might finally have a roof
that might rise and finally take firm hold of the flag
which still hung in the sky with its colors."
And [foreign language spoken] [laugh]
[ Applause ]   [ Pause ]
>> We now turn our attention to the author of the second book,
awarded the 2012 Americas Book Award for Children and Adolescents,
namely Margarita Engle in "Hurricane Dancers --
The First Caribbean Pirate Shipwreck," also published
by Henry Holt and Company.
This historical fiction text recounts the story of a biracial,
bilingual child named Quebrado, or "the broken one,"
from multiple perspectives and in favors poetry.
Set during the early years of the Caribbean conquest,
Quebrado reveals his own internal brokenness brought
about by his Taino mother's death from a plague
and the consequent abandonment of his Spanish father,
[inaudible] from depression; and of his capture
by the powerful landowner-turned pirate, Bernardino de Talavera;
enslaved on a pirate ship that also holds the brutal conquistador
and Venezuelan governor, Alonso de Ojeda, hostage.
His translation abilities are exploited.
However, a violent hurricane destroys the ship
and wrenches the boy into the sea where he is rescued by a fisherman,
then quickly accepted into the local Taino community whose children
renamed him, "Hurara," or "born of wind."
Quebrado slowly begins to find healing there
until the surviving de Talavera and de Ojeda stumbled upon the locale,
expecting his compliance in their quest to subjugate
and control the residents.
At this point, Quebrado finds the courage to tell his story
and to explain his quiet bilingual voice and feels
like a small canoe gliding back and forth between worlds made of words.
Eventually, Quebrado holds the fate of the two men in his decision
on their behalf, frees him from brokenness and wandering,
and leads to friends, a home and a new self-selected name.
This small text and size accurately portrays historical events
and real people while also presenting high interest themes
for more mature adolescent readers in accessible format.
Margarita Engle grew up in Los Angeles
as a second-generation American and draws from her Cuban roots,
the country of her mother's family for her six novels and free verse.
She sees writing and historical novel and free verse are similar
to time travel -- I love that --
time travel, as it creates a dream-like blend of imagination
and reality, an exploration of things long past and a chance
to communicate with the future through its readers.
Margarita gains inspiration for her writings from people she admires.
Often, unsung heroes from the past such as Juan Francisco Manzano
from the "Poet Slave of Cuba," and Rosa la Bayamesa,
the nurse in the wilderness of "Surrender Tree."
She also conducts, like the other authors and illustrators,
careful precise research for her books and she scours bibliographies
of old references until she is able
to locate first-hand eyewitness accounts with their details
and emotions of daily existence from lives of long ago.
She considers her slow painstaking research to be a little like seeking
for lost treasures waiting to be found.
The first Latina to receive in her very honor,
Margarita Engle was also a botanist and a professor
at California State Polytechnic University.
She has won numerous other book awards,
including the Jane Adams Award
and the Pura Belpre Award, to name a few.
She seeks to provide young people with stories
that give hopeful endings, and so chooses to focus
on optimistic aspects in her writing projects,
which stand in stark contrast to the cruelty
and injustice the protagonist may have experienced.
This commitment to focusing on hope for her characters even in the midst
of their adversity is a value evident even in her volunteer work
for wilderness, search and rescue dog training programs.
I am most proud to be able to again represent the review committee
for the Americas Award for Children's
and Young Adult Literature
and present Margarita Engle to you today.
Thank you.   [ Applause ]
[ Pause ]
>> Margarita Engle: Thank you so much!
[Foreign language spoken].
Thank you for that wonderful introduction.
This is my third Americas Award and it does not get familiar.
It's absolutely shocking and stunning and amazing and surprising,
and each one has been more special than the last.
Thank you.
I'm profoundly grateful to the Americas Award Committee, to CLASP,
then the Library of Congress, and I also wish
to express deep appreciation to my family and to Reka Simonsen,
I think it's amazing that we had the same editor,
and to the Holt publishing team, and we have the same publisher.
Writing is an exploration.
It's a physical, emotional, intellectual
and spiritual journey of fact and imagination.
Imagine the year 1509.
Imagine that you are the enslaved boy on a Spanish pirate ship.
You believe the wood of the ship is a forest spirit
because you were taught that trees are just as alive as people.
I listened to the song of creaking planks, the roll and sway of clouds
and sky, wild music and thunder, the groans of wood, a morning moan
as this old ship remembers her true self, her tree self,
A hurricane wrecks the ship, washing you ashore.
Suddenly free, you have a chance to rediscover the island of your birth.
Many years have passed since I was a child of the land,
with my hands in moist soil.
Now I am eager to plant yams, peanuts and papayas,
and pluck hollow gourds from tangled vines
to make musical maraca rattles.
I long to eat pineapples that taste like golden sunlight instead
of dry ship spread and salted beef and [inaudible].
Imagine the dangers and imagine rediscovering the peacekeeping
rituals of island tribes.   [ Pause ]
Sphere games are an island's courtroom.
Playing ball helps readers turn their anger into energy
so they can make wise decisions about matters of warfare and peace.
As a small child, I used to play for fun, but now I am old enough
to join the solemn team who will decide what to do about my tale
of [inaudible] and slave traders,
the improbable story of my true life.
The sphere of [inaudible] and cotton is as hard as a tree,
but it moves as lightly as air.   Wooden belts protect our bellies.
We are not allowed to hit the sphere with feet or hands; only our heads,
hips, shoulders and knees.
I leaped to strike with my forehead, and in that instant
of motion all worries vanished.   I fly. I soar.
The sphere looks like a golden sun guiding me up into blue sky
where my mind suddenly feels completely clear even though the
future is still cloudy and uncertain.
Imagine the dangers.
Both the pirate and his hostage, the brutal conquistador,
Cuban crocodiles are the most aggressive in the world.
They jump.   They leap.
Crocodile infested swamps, forested mountains and.
mercifully, a wild horse.   A blue [inaudible].
[Inaudible] and the green meadow are so far from the swamps
that I should feel completely safe, but questions begin
to pound through my nervous mind.
Is the horse alone or did she escape from an army of mounted invaders?
Are there explorers nearby searching for gold and slaves?
Perhaps [inaudible] alone wander like my father.
If he is still alive and roaming, would we recognize each other
after so many lonely years?   The mare is expertly trained,
an eager mount whose steadiness reminds me how to guide a horse
with my voice, my legs, my hopes.
I have no saddle or bridle, no halter or lead rope.
[Inaudible] bring up the towering masts
of rolling ships must've helped me preserve the art of balance.
I ride. I fall.   I climb back up and ride again.
I feel like a giant gazing down at my world from the height of sky.
Imagine yourself as a writer trying to tell this legendary tale.
Where do you start?
The research process is daunting, lacking first person accounts.
All you can do is solve small mysteries, filling in the gaps
with day-dreamed details.
Writing a historical novel and verse does feel like time travel;
it is a chance to learn from the past, and it is a chance
to communicate with young readers who are the future.
How many chances do we have to communicate with the future?
It's an opportunity to honor ancient peacekeeping decisions in a way
that might help modern young people make their own difficult decisions.
The writing process is solitary and silent,
but there are hurricane force, winds of surprise, and I have never
yet managed to read this [inaudible] note at the end of the book
without crying, so I apologize in advance.
Maybe today will be the day.   [Laugh] I became fascinated
by the first Caribbean pirate shipwreck while researching my own
family history.
One of my ancestors was a Cuban pirate who used his treasure
to buy the cattle ranch where many generations
of my mother's family were born.   It was a ranch I loved visiting.
[Sobbing] Sorry.
When I was a child, I especially loved riding horses.
The 1511 Spanish conquest of Cuba came so close to genocide
that most historians regard Cuban Indians as extinct.
While researching this story, I learned that throughout the 16th
and 17th centuries, the region around my ancestor's ranch was known
as "Un Pueblo Indio," "An Indian Community."
I became a subject of the Cuban DNA Project and discovered
that I carry a genetic marker verifying tens of thousands of years
of maternal Amerindian ancestry.
I am a descendant of countless generations of women
like [inaudible], indigenous Cubans do survive
in body as well as spirit.
Imagine learning that hope has no limits.
Thank you.
[Foreign language spoken]   [ Applause ]
>> I just would like to remind everyone that we have books
for sale, so if you're interested in purchasing "Pablo Neruda --
Poet of the People," or "Hurricane Dancers," take the opportunity now
because you have the authors here to sign your copy.
They are for sale on the back by the Library of Congress.
Another very important individual which we wanted to highlight now
because I want to remind everyone
that tomorrow we have a teacher workshop where Monica Brown
and Julie and many of our educators will be there.
We have another committee member here, America Calderon,
and she works for Teaching for Change
and she's a very important [applause] resource here.
[Applause] She's a very important resource here in the city,
so if you're interested she works with parents and schools
and bringing these stories to the community
and building a literacy program.
So I thank America tremendously for helping us with our outreach.
We would like to conclude today by recognizing Americas Award founder
and assistant Director of Evaluation and Public Engagement
at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Center
for Latin American Caribbean Studies, Julie Kline.
Julie proposed the idea of the Americas Award to the CLASP teaching
and outreach committee back in early 1992.
The need for the award was made clear to Julie by a lack
of high quality children and young adult books available
in the United States that accurately represented the Latino experience
at that time.
She worked with CLASP and the committee in its early years
to highlight the unity of cultures throughout all of the Americas,
north, central and south, representing the rich contributions
of all peoples with Caribbean and Latin American origins.
Her passion and interest
in children's literature began while working for --
while working with Brazilian children's books
at the International Youth Library on a fellowship in Munich.
Her experience working to preserve and share a culture
through children's literature has made the Americas Award an effective
tool for learning about Latin America.
Since its inception, Julie has brought the Americas Award
into the forefront of children's book awards, presenting at ALA,
in REFORMA conferences; collaborating with others
such as the Pura Belpre and the Tomas Rivera Awards.
She's helped get Americas featured in journals such as children
and libraries, Bookbird, in school library journal among others.
Locally in Milwaukee, Julie has led discussion groups,
afterschool reading clubs and developed curriculum with teachers
across the country in her online summer teacher institute.
On behalf of CLASP and the Americas Award Committee
and many others along the way, we would like to honor Julie today
with a weaving which she has awarded others year after year,
which is a symbol of our appreciation for her dedication
and passion weaving the stories and experience
of the Americas throughout libraries and classrooms across the country.
Thank you, Julie.   [ Applause ]
>> Julie Kline.
See, I figured I'd find my way back to the microphone somehow.
[Laugh] Just very quickly, it's important to say, the Americas Award
when it started in the early 90s, we were inspired
by the Africana Book Award by the African Studies Association.
So the interest has always been not only America's cultural heritages,
but also international education both in schools and global citizens.
So Brenda Randolph is here from Africana Book Award [applause],
and Mr. [inaudible] because at the very least we helped
to inspire these South Asian Book Award which is going to be given
for the first time next week Saturday
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
So you started something, we carried it on, it's moving forward.
And it's really fun to sit here.
I didn't tear up last year when it was my last year but I am now.
[Laugh] It's really fun to sit here and look at the award
from the outside as something established with the future
in wonderfully able hands at great institutions with Denise and Claire
at Vanderbilt and Tulane.
20th anniversary next year and it's really fun to see
where this goes from here.   Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.