The Pura Belpre Award is an award given to great Latino literature. There are many authors that have won this award. The pictures in this type of literature are very expressive and fun to look at. Also, the stories are very intriguing. It’s important for Latino children to be able to see themselves portrayed in the stories and be able to relate their way of life to those in the books. The Pura Belpre Award has opened up the doors for Latino authors to be recognized for their great books. One great author that has won the Pura Belpre Award is Maya Christina Gonzalez. She was born 1964 in Lancaster, California in the Mojave Desert. The Mojave Desert is mentioned in one of her books and inspired her to write. Maya is also an artist and did the drawings in many of her books. One book she wrote is My Colors, My World. It is about a young girl who tells about all of the different colors she sees in her world. The book shows both the English and Spanish of each color and written page. This is a great book for the whole class because every student can understand it because it is in English but it also shows the Spanish language also. …show more content…
Another author that has won the Pura Belpre Award is Lulu Delacre.
Lulu was born in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico. Lulu likes writing about her own culture. Her books celebrate folklore and the traditions of Latinos in both English and Spanish. Lulu is both an author and an illustrator. One book that Lulu wrote is Arrorro`, Mi Nino, which is a collection of Latino lullabies and gentle games. This book shows lullabies and poems in both English and Spanish. It also gives you instructions on how to do actions to the songs to get your child or student involved in reading. This is a great way to incorporate songs, reading, and different
cultures. My favorite book that is a Pura Belpre Award is by Gary Soto. Gary was born 1952 in Fresno, California. Gary taught English to Spanish speakers as a volunteer. Gary has also written many books of poetry. Gary lives in Berkeley, California. In Gary’s career he has won a lot of awards. In 1999, Gary received an award from the Hispanic Heritage Foundation called the Literature Award. My favorite book that Gary Soto has written is Chato and the Party Animals. This is a story about a cat that is sad because he has never had a birthday party. So his friend throws him a party but his friend can’t find him. They finally find Chato and they party all night. This is a very funny and well written book. The illustrations are really great and add to the story. It is important that all children feel included in a classroom setting. This means that as a teacher you need to make your lessons understandable for different learning styles and levels of understanding and include different books for your students to read about different cultures. Pura Belpre books are a great choice when choosing books about the Latino culture because they are the best of the best. The illustrations are great and the stories are written well and incorporate the Latino culture very well. Maya Christina Gonzalez, Lulu Delacre, and Gary Soto are all amazing writers that portray the Latino culture in a very vivid and real way that makes Latino children proud of their heritage. All great authors need to be recognized and the Pura Belpre Award picks the best and all three of these authors deserved this award greatly.
While there are many themes that can be found in this novella, Benitez skillfully uses the Mexican culture and the beliefs to improve her story, giving it understanding beyond the traditional American thoughts that many foreign writers are unable to achieve.
Sandra Benitez, birth name Sandy Ables, was born in Washington D.C. March 26, 1941. Due to her father’s job as a diplomat, she lived most of her childhood in Mexico and El Salvador. During Benitez teenage years, she lived with her family in the United States where she assimilated into American culture. In 1979 she decided to leave her job and began to attend a creative writing class. “Her first novel, a murder mystery set in Missouri, was never published. She brought the novel to a writer’s conference, where she was told it was terrible”. (“About”, Benitez) This led her to become the person she is now and focus on writing of her Latina heritage. In 1993 Benitez had published her first novel, A Place Where the Sea Remembers, where she received the Minnesota Book Award and the Barnes and Noble Discover Award.
The 2006 Pura Belpré Award was presented to Viola Canales for her coming-of-age tale, The Tequila Worm. Set in a Mexican American community in MacAllen, Texas, this story is told from the point-of-view of Sofia, a young girl who has many adventures in her small community. Through the course of the text Sofia develops from a young child who plays dress-up games with her cousins, to a young woman who is willing to move three hundred miles away from school.
Selena Quintanilla Perez was born on April 16, 1971 in Lake Jackson, Texas. Selena grew up understanding Spanish, but English was her first language. At the age of five Selena saw her brother learning to play the guitar and became jealous of the attention he was getting. She picked up a songbook and began to sing. Her family quickly turned their attention to her strong and beautiful voice. In the first grade Selena excelled at a game called Jump the Brook, in which two ropes are placed side by side and each kid takes a turn jumping across.1 In middle school Selena was in honors classes and made A’s and B’s. Selena used her allowance to put clothes on layaway. As a teenager, Selena hung all of her awards on the wall next to the staircase in her family’s house. As an adult, Selena was very involved with kids. She was a spokeswoman for the D.A.R.E. Program.
Hilma Contreras’s most substantial honor occurred when she became the first female recipient of the 2002 “Premio Nacional de Literatura” (The National Literature Award) for lifetime work. Throughout her 93 years of life, Contreras published many literary works including, “Four Stories”, “The Bait”, “The Earth is Raging”, and many others. As previously mentioned, Contreras died alone in her hometown San Francisco de Macoris, leaving behind a life long legacy of
He learned programming techniques and became a self-employed writer of software and software documentation. Dora Lopez is a Mexican American. Her father worked at a technical college as a clerk and her mother attended technical college while also working in a book store. To access Spanish-language newspapers and magazines, she had to travel seventy miles. She taught herself how to read and write in Spanish and used her mother's discount to buy books that were in Spanish. She was exposed to a computer for the first time at the age of thirteen. Later she partly worked as a translator for coworkers
Celia Cruz was born in a humble neighborhood of Santo Suarez in Havana, Cuba on October 21, 1924. She was one of 14 children. One of her chores was to sing to her youngest sibling to sleep. Her first appearance as a child earned her a pair of shoes from a tourist that was watching. As a teenager she performed in many talent shows at school and community gatherings. Also her aunt took her cousin and her to nightclubs and cabarets. Yet, while her family supported her talent, her father was insisting for Celia to continuing her school so she could become a teacher.
Alvarez was born in New York and then moved to the Dominican Republic shortly after she was born . Later in 1960 , she immigrated back to New York and received her education in boarding schools . She has spent a majority of her life in the United States , and considers herself to be an American , yet she likes to bridge the two worlds of Latina and American culture . Most of her stories have hints of her Dominican roots but she show’s her experiences with human insight . Even though her
Frida Kahlo nació el 6 de Julio 1907 en la ciudad de México. Ella les dijo a muchas personas que nació el 7 de Julio 1910 porque quiso parecer más joven a los otros. Aunque sus padres fueron judíos, Frida nació en México. Frida fue una artista surrealista y sus obras vió de sus emociones de la tristexa y la cólera de su vida. Ella le encantó decir los chistes, reír, y sonreír. Frida Kahlo llevó las ropas de la cultura tradicional de México porque pensó que las ropas fueran una forma del arte. Todo el mundo admiró mucho a Frida, a causa de sus obras y su actitud.
In high school I was involved in 3 clubs, 3 varsity sports, and did a least 40 hours of community service through National Honors Society and National Technical Honors Society. I participated in National Technical Honors Society and Health Occupations Students of America(HOSA) through Lapeer County Education and Technical center, and participated in athletics at Imlay City high school. During my high school career I played varsity volleyball for two years, varsity basketball for one year, and varsity soccer for four years, but I jumped back and forth from junior varsity to varsity my freshman year. Also, while being apart of HOSA I was a junior representative my junior year of high school, and I am Vice-President my senior year. And I also mentor our middle school chapter of HOSA and help them to accomplish all of their competitive events.
As a student that is currently seeking a career in the medical professions, I have had to routinely contemplate my reasons for pursuing such an extensive education program in a field that is constantly demanding excessive time and effort. I know of students—many friends and acquaintances of mine included—that have the most sure-fire, inspirational stories that align with their desire to become doctors, surgeons, physician assistants, etc. They always seemed to have a story that emphasized their desire to “give back” what they have received from the medical community. Because of that, ever since the beginning of high school, I have been trying to find an extraordinary reason, a purpose for my medical pursuits. Perhaps I could justify my passion for
Frida Kahlo was born in a suburb of Mexico city, Coyoacán, on July 6, 1907 but claimed July 7, 1910 as her year of birth since 1910 was the beginning of the Mexican Revolution therefore, wanted her life to begin with the birth of modern Mexico. She was best known for her self-portraits and her work had been described as “surrealist”. Her works were also remembered for its pain and passion, and its vibrant, intense colors. Her work had been celebrated in Mexico as a symbol of national and native tradition.
Since many individuals of the Latin American society who chose to write become intellectuals, these intellectuals, specifically women, whom have brought the social and development divisions of the Latin Americans into writing providing a variety of knowledge. Focusing on Latin American poetry, Julia de Burgos is commonly known as one of the greatest poets in Puerto Rico and Latin American history. In 1938 at the age of twenty-four, Julia de Burgos self-published a series of poems, Poema en veinte sucos, which portrayed her exploration of differing writing styles of Puerto Rican writers of that time, consisting of Luis Palés Matos and Luis Lloréns Torres. Through a developed skill of lyricism and unique imagery, Julia de Burgos expresses the
Joy Harjo is a really known author who likes to write about women with some of her Native American writing. She is more direct than other writers like Wendy Rose, but still has that cryptic way of teaching yet easier to understand. Which is something I particularly like.
2 The illustrator of this book was Consuelo Méndez, a Venezuelan painter and graphic artist whose work is widely exhibited in Latin American. Her illustration perfectly portrays the story of Prietita and Joaquin, each scene of the book is represented in the illustration to the point that you could only admire the illustration and still understand the story without the text, Méndez went to South Texas in order to capture the home