[ Applause ] >> Catalina Gomez: We want to welcome all of you who are joining us via livestream as well. We're very happy to be livestreaming the program. I only have a couple of housekeeping items for you. Just if you could please turn off or silence your cell phones for the duration of this program, we would greatly appreciate it. And we also wanted to let you guys know that we as a Hispanic division have a mailing list right in front. If any of you are interested in finding out more about our program and our projects, please sign in, sign our sign-in sheet [inaudible]. We are very excited for this anniversary, and it's my honor to introduce the principal deputy Librarian of Congress, Mark Sweeney. [ Applause ] >> Mark Sweeney: Thank you and everyone, welcome here to the Library of Congress. I'm delighted to welcome you on behalf of Dr. Hayden, Librarian of Congress, to this year's America's award ceremony. For 25 years, the consortium of Latin American Studies programs, Tulane University's Stone Center for Latin American Studies, and Vanderbilt University's Center for Latin American Studies have collaborated with the Hispanic division here at the Library of Congress to celebrate children's and young adult books that portray Latin America, the Caribbean, and Latinos in the United States. I'm aware that there are many here that have been involved in coordinating this event, and I want to welcome Denise Woltering-Vargas and her colleagues here today to the Library. But I would also like to take this opportunity to extend a very special thanks to Georgette Dorn. Having worked at the Library of Congress for 55 years and having served as the chief of the Hispanic division with great distinction since 1994, Georgette is retiring next month. She began her career at the Library of Congress in 1962, moving to the Hispanic division in 1969. In her later role as chief, she initiated the digitization of the Handbook of Latin American Studies and the creation of the online website and the digitization of the Archive Hispanic Literature on tape. As well as making the collections fairly available online, Georgette also influenced those using or interested in using these resources. Additionally, through her administration of the Huntington Society Gift Fund, Georgette has awarded internships to hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students to work in the Hispanic division. Many of those interns are now members of the current generation of Latin American bibliographers in the United States. Georgette's vision and her passion for literature, scholarship, and programming have left an indelible mark on our institution and have strengthened the myriad roles that the role the Luca [phonetic] Hispanic culture plays in the Library's collections, outreach efforts and programming. Indeed, the tradition of hosting this particular event here at the Library materialized in many ways, thanks to Georgette's belief in the value of the Americas award. We wish her a wonderful retirement, and we thank her for her countless contributions throughout her career. Georgette. [ Applause ] Thank you. I would like to close by just congratulating all of those involved in the America's Award, the organizers, the winners, past and present, and congratulate you on your 25th anniversary. We hope all of you here and those of you watching online enjoy this afternoon's program, and I will pass it to the esteemed Georgette Dorn. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Georgette Dorn: I'm very glad that my last official function is giving the, is hosting the Americas award. We began 35 years ago with the University of Wisconsin in Madison, I'm sorry, in Milwaukee, and of course now we're doing it with Tulane and Vanderbilt. So welcome this year's awardees, and I'm very pleased to welcome everybody here. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Denise Woltering-Vargas: Good afternoon. My name is Denis Woltering-Vargas. I'd like to say thanks, thank you, to Catalina Gomez, Mark Sweeney, Georgette of course. Good afternoon and welcome to the 2018 Americas Award. On behalf of the consortium of Latin American Studies programs, Vanderbilt University and Tulane University, we welcome you to the 25th ceremony of these awards. We are very excited to be here, sharing the ceremony with you across the country, streaming with fans across the country, with our class members. It's a great addition this year to be streaming and celebrating and engaging with the award with communities across the country. Our co-sponsors of this year's award are working with teachers to develop curriculum that correspond with books, forming book clubs, creating book trailers, and much more. The awards are administered by the consortium of Latin American Studies programs and coordinated by both Tulane and Vanderbilt. Generous support is also provided by Florida International University, Stanford University, the Ohio State University, UNC Duke consortium in Latin American and Caribbean studies, the University of Florida, the University of New Mexico, the University of Texas at Austin, University of Utah, and the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. A lot of really great support from our centers from across the country. Our awards are given up to two books each year and are selected for their distinctive literary quality, cultural contextualization, exceptional integration of text, illustration and design and potential for classroom use. The goal of this award is to link the Americas, to reach beyond geographic borders, focusing instead on cultural heritages within the hemisphere. I'd like to take a moment to say thank you to our committee. Many of our committee members are here with us today. This year's Americas Award review committee was comprised of teachers, librarians, faculty, and community activists from Tennessee, Texas, Illinois, North Carolina and Wisconsin. This year Paula Mason was our chair of the committee. She is a librarian for the Waukesha Public Library in Wisconsin. Just to give you an idea of the process that our committee goes through. In the fall, books arrive, throughout the year. By January we have our list. We set up Skype calls in the spring and chat for hours over weekends about amazing books, and they are spirited conversations about the diverse cultures of Latin America and the Caribbean. Coleen and I are extremely grateful for the hard work of the committee, and the care that they put into this year's award winners, the honorable mentions, and the commended titles. I'd like to share some messages about our founder of the Americas Award, Julie. The Americas Award began as an idea 25 years ago by my colleague, Julie. She is the associate director at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean studies at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, a member of class. She started the award when no other award recognizing Latin America and Latino culture in children's and young adult literature yet existed. Her idea became one of the most important projects of class. It has enabled scholars of Latin America to come together and engage with children's literature in many diverse ways. It has become our passion and our responsibility to educators to read and share authentic and engaging literature for the K12 classroom. I want to thank Julie by presenting to her a symbol she once created years ago, a weaving from Guatemala that represents the weaving of stories and voices of the Americas. I'd like to invite my daughter, Valeca [phonetic], to share our token of thanks. >> Wow. [ Applause ] I got to see the whole thing. Thanks. >> I want to thank you by presenting this and say muchas gracias, Julie. Come on up. [ Applause ] >> Julie Kline: Good afternoon. Wow, 25 years [inaudible]. In his 1998 acceptance speech for the circuit at the Library of Congress for the Americas Award. Author Francisco Jimenez said for most of my school days I didn't find in the literature the experiences that I had gone through, so I decided that it was very important to promote in any way possible ethnic American literature and also to contribute to that body of literature. And I thought that it was important to do that because the curriculum, what we study in school, reflects who we are as a people. So if we do not see ourselves as students, if we do not see ourselves reflected in the curriculum, in the literature, in the music, in the art that we study, then we do not arrive at a good understanding of who we are personally and who we are as a nation. From the start, our goals for the Americas Award were simple. To highlight books that allow children and young adults to see themselves in the literature, to encourage U.S. publication of such books, to showcase the diversity of Latin America, the Caribbean, U.S. Latin Next, and other diasporic Americas communities in the hemisphere, and to encourage young people to read engaging stories about lives and cultures perhaps different to them. The Americas Award was inspired by the Children's Africana Book Award, CABA, created by Africa Access with the Outreach Council of the African Studies Association. The book award concept seemed a perfect project to propose to the class teaching and outreach committee. I had some background that made me really interested in internationalism in children's books, and the committee at the time was extremely receptive to the idea. And we did an event through my center in 1991 called Reading Latin America, both at Columbia Teachers College and in Milwaukee, which was, I sort of count that as a starting point because it gave us a sense of what was out there at the time in terms of this kind of content in children's books. The class committee helped shape the award criteria, and in doing so, we decided to focus on the multi-cultural international dynamic, including the Latin Next experience in the U.S. and including all the Americas, not just Spanish-speaking countries and communities. We also determined the award should be more than recognition of winners but rather should include an annotated annual bibliography of commended titles to be a guide for classroom use and for Library collection development. As we refine the aware rationale and criteria and discuss what to include and where to draw lines, if any, I remember the comment by Linda Hahn Miller, who was a former outreach coordinator at the University of Florida. Said Linda, the world is made up of lumpers and splitters. That is, people who think about commonalities and connections and those who think about difference in separation. I think for all of us shaping the early Americas Award, we aim to be lumpers through and through. So the award was further refined over the years by the expertise, thoughtfulness, and commitment of the National Review Committee members, all of you and all of your predecessors. And as it's matured, other children's book awards, such as the Pura Belpre and the Tomas Rivera were established. Each award makes a contribution, and we've dovetailed with each, I think, in a way that broadly benefits the field of children's literature. In the case of the Americas, both the Award's recognition of the diversity of Americas and the inclusion of a criterion focused specifically on potentials of classroom use helps make it's contributions unique. So, I remember writing a letter after the first competition when Becky Guenther, masqueraded by Lula de la Croix [phonetic] run, I think we had a whole six books on the commended list, and wrote a letter to the committee, I believe there was onion skin paper involved. It was back then, and it said something about we'll look back on this 20 years from now and look at what we started. Well, it's been 25 years. And there's been over 400 titles recognized since 1993 as winner, honor, and commended books. And the ongoing relationship with the Library of Congress has given us a remarkable way to truly celebrate the books, authors, and illustrators. Creatively coordinated since 2011 by Vanderbilt and Tulane, the Americas Award is stronger and more vibrant than ever, and it's enhanced by the innovative outreach programming, by colleagues at Latin American study centers across the U.S. Diversity in children's literature has a long way to go, but we can all appreciate the Americas Award and in children's and young adult literature has made a 25-year and counting contribution to diversity. In recognition of books of distinctive literary quality, cultural contextualization, noteworthy integration of text, illustration, and design, and potential for classroom use. [foreign language spoken] Thank you. [ Applause ] I do want to go back very briefly to, back to Georgette Dorn. The relationship of the Library of Congress has been really valuable for the Americas Award, and it was you and I at a meeting in New Orleans, getting in a car after a committee meeting, going to lunch, and Georgette said, we should have this at the Library of Congress. And I said, uh-huh, that'd be really swell. It was because of Georgette and the commitment of Georgette in the Hispanic division over the years that we've been able to give this kind of weight, this kind of value to the Americas Award, and it's very much Georgette and the Hispanic division. So, thank you, Georgette, very much. [ Applause ] I believe the Americas Award has a present finally for you after all these years. >> Denise Woltering-Vargas: Can you [inaudible]. >> Julie Kline: If anybody has helped with the weaving of stories, it's Georgette Dorn. Thank you, Georgette. [ Inaudible Comment ] My little boy [inaudible]. [laughter] Thank you all. [ Applause ] >> Connie Sharp: My name is Connie Sharp, and I'm a district librarian for Metro Public Schools in Nashville, Tennessee. I am honored to serve as a review committee member, and I'm thrilled to be with you today. I would like to recognize the 2018 Americas Award commended titles. Several English-Spanish bilingual picture books made our commended list. One such book is The Little Doctor, written by Dr. Juan Guerra, and illustrated by Victoria Castillo. In this story, a young boy dreams of becoming a doctor. This delightful book is based on the writer's childhood experience, and it is my pleasure to welcome its author, Dr. Juan Guerra, his wife, Tammy, and their sons Salvador and Sebastian, to our ceremony today. We are pleased to welcome you-- [ Applause ] We are pleased to welcome you and are inspired by your story. In Marti's Song for Freedom by Emma Otheguy, illustrated by Beatriz Vidal, we learn of Jose Marti and his tireless efforts in speaking out for Cuba's independence from Spain as well as the love he shared for his two countries. Another biographical piece is Ruben Dario, written by Georgina Laazaro and illustrated by Lonnie Ruiz. In this poetic piece, readers learn the story of Nicaraguan poet, journalist, novelist, and diplomat, Ruben Dario. Little Skeleton's Countdown to Midnight charmingly captures the celebratory spirit of día de los Muertos. Author Susie Jaramillo engages readers of all ages in the countdown through rhyme and enticing illustrations. Young People's Poet Laureate and former Americas Award winning author, Margarita Engle captivates us with her poetry in Bravo, poems about amazing Hispanics. The vibrant illustrations of Rafael Lopez complement each diverse character and the role they played in history. Margarita is recognized today for having a second title on our commended list, Forest World. In this timely novel written in verse, she introduces us to the story of two siblings, one in the United States, and one in Cuba, who were unaware of the other until they are reunited to spend a summer together in Cuba. Family stands as a strong theme of several of our commended titles. In The Epic Fail of Arturo Zamora, eighth grader, Arturo's summer gets off to a pretty typical start until things go awry. Author Pablo Cartaya tells an intriguing story that will have you rooting for Arturo in his efforts to save not only the family business but his community's identity as well. Keeping with the theme of family, The Inexplicable Logic of My Life, written by Benjamin Alire Saenz, tells the story of a white 17-year-old boy raised by a gay Mexican father. It is a story of resiliency, what makes a family, and the connections that bind us. In The First Rule of Punk, author Celia Perez introduces us to Maria Luisa, better known as Malu. After moving to Chicago from California, Malu must deal with the familiar changes of being a new kid in town and embracing her punk identity. We see a young girl become the hero of her own story in Lucia, the Luchadora, by Cynthia Leonor Garza, illustrated by Alyssa Bermudez. This delightful book offers a cultural view of Mexican superheroes and celebrates the courage and determination of girls all over the world. Previous Americas Award winning author, Monica Brown, brought us The Biography of Frida Kahlo in her book, Frida Kahlo and her Animalitos, illustrated by John Parra. This captivating story is presented from the unique perspective of her beloved pet. In the thriller Disappeared, written by Francisco Stork, two Mexican teenagers are inadvertently drawn into the world of drug trafficking, kidnapping, corruption, and violence. Our last commended title this year is Sing, Don't Cry, by Angela Dominguez. This story is inspired by the Mexican ballad, Cielito Lindo, which is a loving tribute to her grandfather, successful mariachi musician Apolinar Navarrette Diaz. Please give a round of applause for the 2018 Americas Award commended titles. [ Applause ] And now I have the pleasure of chairing the 2018 Americas Award honorable mention titles. Our first book, All the Way to Havana, written by Margarita Engle, and illustrated by Mike Curato, is the delightful story of a young boy travelling to the big city of Havana, Cuba, in his family's old blue car, Cara Cara. Along the way they experience the sights and sounds of the streets, the beautiful cars putt-putting and bumpety-bumping along the way. This engaging story celebrates the spirit of the young boy's family as well as that of the Cuban people they greet along the way. Margarita Engle's masterful use of onomatopoeia coupled with the brilliant illustrations of Mike Curato make this an engaging read aloud for the young reader. Our second book, Lucky Broken Girl, is based on the inspirational story of author, Ruth Behar. Having recently emigrated to New York in the 1960's, fifth grader, Ruthie Mizrahi [phonetic], a Cuban Jewish girl, feels that she is finally starting to fit in. School is going well, and she has become known as the neighborhood hot-scotch queen. Tragically, Ruthie is involved in a horrific car accident that nearly cost her her life. She is so badly injured that she is forced to lie in bed in a body cast immobilized for nearly a year. This inspirational story allows us to witness the struggles and successes that ultimately form the diverse friendships that bring hope, healing, and happiness back into her life. Please join me in congratulating the 2018 honorable mention titles, their authors, and illustrators. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Emily Chavez: Good afternoon. I'm Emily Chavez, and I'm the associate director in the Center for Multicultural Affairs at Duke University, and I'm here also on behalf of the UNC Duke Consortium in Latin America and Caribbean Studies. It is my great pleasure to present this 2018 Americas Award to Duncan Tonatiuh for his children's book Danza! Amalia Hernández and El Ballet Folklórico de México. You may know that Mr. Tonatiuh is a prolific author and illustrator whose work has been recognized by the Americas Award several times. In addition to this award we present today, Mr. Tonatiuh was a 2015 Americas Award winner for his book Separate is Never Equal, and he won honorable mentions in 2014 and 2016, in addition to having multiple books on our commended titles list. Thus, I would like to thank Mr. Tonatiuh for his many contributions to Latin American children's literature. Danza documents an important part of Latin American and performing arts history. It is the story of Amalia Hernandez' life work to create a dance company that brought to life the history and the many indigenous identities and cultures of Mexico through contemporary movement. Hernandez' dance choreography in many ways was about recognizing and honoring Mexico's history and in turn, Mr. Tonatiuh does the same in telling the story of Amalia Hernandez' life long devotion to her craft and the impact it made on Mexico and the world. In his typical [inaudible] inspired style with creative textures and rich colors, Mr. Tonatiuh draws readers into the pages. This book is the first of it's kind to tell the story of Amalia Hernandez to a children's audience, and in this way makes more accessible a Latin American pioneer in the arts. I imagine young Latina dancers and any young dancer reading this story with pleasure. Empowered with the knowledge of who came before them, who paved the way. I would like to now present Duncan Tonatiuh with the 2018 Americas Award for children's and young adult literature. [ Applause ] >> Duncan Tonatiuh: Thank you and I'm very happy, very grateful to be here. I want to congratulate my fellow authors/illustrators whose work is also being celebrated, recognized today. I'm very thankful to CLAS to the committee for celebrating my work, for choosing my work, and all these other wonderful books that you're presenting today. I think, you know, the Americas Award does a wonderful job in doing that and highlighting and creating this list of books, this body of work that celebrates Latin America and Latinos in the U.S. I also really appreciate and feel very grateful to CLAS for their continual support, that they've recognized some of my work in the past, and in the job they do, creating resources to use the books in the classroom. I think that's something very special and wonderful that the Americas Award does creating different guides in different ways of not only recognizing the books but to then making them useful to teachers and to people in the classroom. I take the opportunity to thank the people at Abrams, who made this book possible, and I feel very grateful to the people there. And, you know, it takes a whole team to create a book, and I've been making books with Abrams now for almost ten years, and it's been a wonderful relationship, and I'm very happy that they've supported my work and helped it be successful, and I especially want to thank my editor, Howard Reeves, who has always been very thoughtful and has made my work better by his thoughtful and careful editing but also for being a friend and just kind of looking after me and supporting my vision in the books that I want to create. I want to thank my family, you know, my wife, for her love and for her partnership, for being a partner in this adventure. To my kids, who are just my, I have a three-year-old daughter, [inaudible], and a one-year-old son, Maximo, who just bring a lot of joy and happiness, and I thank them for that. And I just want to tell really briefly a little bit of how this book came about, give you a little bit of sort of the story behind the book. My wife, Patty, she's a dancer. She's classically trained, and she does modern and contemporary dance. And the last year she's been aerial dance with the hoop and the straps and the trapeze. And I've done a few illustrations inspired by her dancing, and I like dancing myself and I like watching dance, so I've made some images about that. And so it's something that I'm interested in, that I like. My wife's mother was a dancer, and her grandmother was actually a dancer too, and my wife's mother, my mother-in-law, she danced with Ballet [foreign language] in the '70's for a few years, and so that's-- and it just kind of came up in conversation at some point, and that gave me the idea of making a book about Amalia Hernandez. So that's sort of on one hand. On the other hand, another reason for doing the book, like I remember, I grew up in Mexico, and I remember when I was like seven or eight years old, dressing up like a charro and dancing the [foreign language spoken], and it's a very common experience, a very popular experience, you know, for a kid, especially I think, you know, to celebrate a special occasion like Mother's Day or the end of the school year, to dance, to do, to perform a folkloric dance. And later on when I was a teenager, I came to the United States, and I saw in the United States folkloric dance was also very popular and important, especially for occasions when different kinds of people celebrate their culture, celebrate their heritage. In the case of Mexican American people, you know, on days like Cinco de Mayo or [foreign language spoken] it's a way to show that you're proud of your roots, to display your culture, and so I wanted to do a book about dance and especially folkloric dance, because I know that it's such an important experience, not only in the country where it comes from, in this case in Mexico, but also in the U.S., you know. And when I heard my mother-in-law talking about the folkloric ballet, it just made sense to me to do it about Amalia Hernandez, a woman that really dedicated her life to learning about the traditional dances of Mexico and to then being able to adapt them to the theater and being able to share then in the world stage. So, again, I just want to say thank you, I'm very grateful. I'm very happy. I feel very fortunate for all the support and for all that the Americas Award does. So thank you very much. [ Applause ] >> Paula Mason: Carefully. [laughter] Good afternoon. My name is Paula Mason, and I'm a reference librarian at the Waukesha Public Library in Wisconsin. It's a great honor to be here with you today. I have the privilege of introducing a truly phenomenal author, Ibi Zoboi, whose debut fiction title American Streets moved our hearts and spirit immensely this year. Through Ibi's confident and powerful prose, we have the chance to meet Fabiola, a young Haitian teenager who finds herself painfully separated from her mother as they seek une belle vie, a beautiful future, in the United States with her aunt and cousins in Detroit. This story is so many things as once, but to name just a few, it's a tale of great bravery, resilience of spirit and faith, and a culture and a family which helped carry us through times of unimaginable loss and rebuilding our future when everything falls apart. It also pierces through our hearts and minds with the timeliest of themes, such as immigration, family separation, and the senseless tragedy of the young lives lost. However, at the crossroads of American Street, Ibi never leaves the reader behind without hope. Rather, she brings us alongside Fabiola and her ever-evolving journey towards achieving her own dreams. Thank you so much for this gift, Ibi, and it is an honor to present you, to have you here and present you with an Americas Award. [ Applause ] >> Ibi Zoboi: Good afternoon everyone. Thank you so much. This is such a huge honor for me. Thank you to the consortium for Latin American Studies programs and everyone involved in this award and award ceremony. I'd like to thank my publisher, Harper Collins [inaudible] imprint, and I'd also like to thank my editors, Alisandra Balzer [phonetic] and Haley Lagwich [phonetic] of Alloy [phonetic] Entertainment. I'd like to thank my family and all the programs, the writing programs and the workshops that got me here. I've been writing for 15 years and trying to get published. American Street is my debut novel, and I'm so happy and thrilled and honored to see how it's been honored over the last two years, the feedback from teachers, librarians, and students, and I'm just overjoyed at the fact that readers, young readers, are still discovering this story. I will share a little bit about why, how American Street came to be, why this sort of story is very important to me, and most importantly, I'm really grateful that I am honored by an award that upholds Latin American culture. I am a Haitian immigrant, and as you know, Haiti is not a Spanish-speaking country. It is a Francophone Caribbean nation, and based on that fact, it kind of stands out on it's own. However, it is also a Latin American country which I just discovered I never considered Haiti being part of this larger conversation of Spanish-speaking countries or ever associating it to anything Latin. Our history was that of revolution, of French colonization and African cultural retentions. So only recently did I begin to think about what it means to be a Latin American nation and what it means to be an Afro-Latinx nation. My recently published book is called Pride, it's the Pride and Prejudice remix, or just a light retelling of the literary classic, and it features a Haitian-Dominican character. And as you may or may not know, Haiti and Dominican Republic have been at odds, historical odds, cultural odds, and you know, there's a language barrier as well. And I was thrilled that Elizabeth Acevedo, who is a Dominican author, the author of Poet X, did the narration for Pride. And in that process, in that sort of collaboration we realized that we were healing both of our respective countries. So being honored for this award that has the title Latin in it is also just, it means a lot to me, because Haiti in itself can be very isolated from the larger Caribbean culture and within the western hemisphere itself, being dubbed the poorest country in the western hemisphere, being one of the countries that has the closest ties to African culture, and part of writing American Street was about retaining the culture that has been sort of bastardized in the western media. In American Street, Fabiola holds onto her Vaudou culture, and it meant a lot to me to make that authentic and real and not make our traditions and our culture a caricature in this novel. And when readers and thought leaders, teachers, and librarians recognize that, to me that is sort of defiance and a pushback against what the mainstream has been feeding us for the last few decades about my home country. So, I'm going to share the author's note from American Street, because I've only written it. I remember it being a tough process between my editors and I to figure out the how's and why of this story so that when readers turn to the last page, whatever it is that happens in that last scene in American Street, there's an author's note for readers to kind of unpack what has happened and for readers to understand my intentions. One of the things that really care about is being understood. And I don't always have, authors don't always have the opportunity to state their intentions in a book, and sometimes we have a certain sort of insecurity in terms of did I get my meaning across, did I get, did readers understand what I was trying to do, and sometimes those validations come from awards like this. And it also comes from the committees who plan those awards and read other books and put your work up against others and others that are really qualified as well and see it's value. So, again, I have to say thank you. I have to put this down. So while I did not come to this country as a 16-year-old, Fabiola did. I came to this country as a four-year-old. I moved, the first neighborhood I moved to in New York is a neighborhood called Bushwick, Brooklyn, and I'll explain a little bit more about Bushwick and what it means to come from such a beautiful island, I think all the Latin Americas are like that, tropical, warm, family, love, food, and to have that American dream and to come from what's considered a broken nation by the western media, and it is in many ways, to a broken city, which Detroit is still coming back from, and many of our cities are like this as well, and the kind of conflict that happens in that sort of exchange. So the first seeds of American Street were planted in me when I read a New York Times article entitled Last Stop on the L Train, Detroit. The article was about the far-reaching gentrification of Brooklyn, New York, and it's progression towards Detroit, Michigan. The real last stop on the L train is Canarsie, but Bushwick is the last stop for whites and affluent residents who won't venture too deep into Brooklyn. I was four years old when my mother and I left Haiti, and Bushwick was our first home in America. I didn't know it then, but 1980s Bushwick was described as resembling a war zone. While our house on Hancock Street was fairly intact, other blocks were lined with burnt-out buildings and open lots littered with torn mattresses and old tires. When I read the New York Times article, I remember thinking, how does present-day Detroit compare to the Bushwick I grew up in? It seems like there were too many parallels to ignore. I could transpose my own life as an immigrant onto the timelines of Detroit. I could write a book that rides the train from Bushwick to Detroit and tell the story of a girl, like me, who found her way to the other side. While writing American Street, I pulled from my own memories of living in between cultures, the experiences I had in high school and the many tragic stories about the violence and trauma that girls have endured. In Haiti, many girls dream of freedom to live without the constraints of oppression. Yet, more often than not, these girls and their families leave their home countries only to move to other broken and disenfranchised communities. I kept thinking about how these girls negotiate their own values and culture with the need to survive and aim for the American dream. When Trayvon Martin was killed in Florida in February of 2012, he had been on the phone with Rachel Jeantel, the daughter of a Haitian immigrant. During her testimony in the George Zimmerman trial, I recognized a little bit of myself in Rachel and in the many Haitian teen girls I've worked with over the years. We fold our immigrant selves into this veneer of what we think is African American girlhood. The result is more jagged than smooth. This tension between our inherited identity and our newly adopted selves filters into our relationships with other girls, with the boys we love, and how we interact with the broken [inaudible] around us. I saw Fabiola in these girls, and that's how the story was truly born. I wanted to give Fabiola a strong cultural connection to Haiti so that she's spiritually grounded when faced with a tough decision. While Vaudou is practiced by many in the Haitian diaspora, it still has a negative stereotype in the media as being associated with evil and witchcraft. Vaudou has a complex pantheon and mythological system much like Greek and Roman mythology. Through Fabiola's eyes, her new world and the people who inhabit it are just as complex and magical as her beloved saint [inaudible]. She infused Vaudou into everything that happens to her. This is the source of courage, and I think she is more American because of it. This merging of traditions, this blending of cultures from one broken place to another. I remember those rides on the L train with my mother very well. Graffiti covered every inch of the train cars. I once saw a young man steel a diamond ring right off a woman's finger. My mother pulled me in close and prayed under her breath. We'd made it to the other side, just like Fabiola, but what was this life? I don't know what my life would have been like if I had grown up in Haiti, but I know this much is true. I would not have told this story. Thank you very much. [ Applause ] >> Colleen McCoy: Thank you, Ibi. Hi everyone. My name is Colleen McCoy, and I am the co-coordinator of the Americas Award. Thank you, again, to the Library of Congress, to Georgette Dorn, Catalina Gomez, and the Hispanic division, to the founder of the Americas Award, Julie Kline, and to all of the authors, illustrators, and publishers who submitted to this year's award. Thank you to the Consortium of Latin American Studies programs and all of these years' sponsors. And thank you to an incredible review committee, especially the committee chair, Paula Mason. The thoughtfulness and the dedication of the award of each committee member is truly inspiring. The Americas Award is not just a children's book award but also represents a variety of resources for teachers and librarians. To commemorate this special 25th anniversary, we have put together a comprehensive toolkit for teachers, librarians, and outreach professionals to use as a guide for engaging with books recognized by the award. This toolkit provides classroom activities, curriculum, ideas for community events and teacher workshops, and many other resources and will soon be available on the class website shown in your program. We extend our gratitude to Keira Philipp-Schnurer from the University of New Mexico for leading this special project and for her work on our 25th anniversary commemorative poster. This special poster features beautiful artwork by Americas Award winner Rafael Lopez, and we invite you to take one with you today. At this time, please join us for a reception and book signing with this year's winners. You're welcome to purchase titles just through these doors to the back, and Ibi and Duncan will be in the adjacent room. Thank you all so much for coming, and we'll see you next year. [ Applause ]