The Tomas Rivera Award comes to my home--in Mexico!

I was so concentrated this afternoon; I had sketches that I wanted to send out today as if a curse would fall upon me if I didn't send them out right before everybody at Candlewick left for the long weekend. I didn't even noticed that there was a frenzy of emails in my inbox from people asking me where, oh, where could they call my sister Magaly because they had great news to announce.

What To Do With A Paleta is this year's winner of the Tomas Rivera Book Award!

Now let me say that the Tomas Rivera Award people are humans of high caliber. They are some of the most caring, enthusiastic, and smart people I have ever known. They champion books as if they were sacred. They throw celebrations as for royalty. And now they could even make dreams come true: My sister Magaly lives in Mexico, could they... would it be possible... for them to make happen for my sister to come receive the award in person?

We are talking visiting visa for a Mexican here. Could they make it possible?

I am making this my dream.

How to talk to kids about death, in Haiti and at home--would it work for me?

I stumbled upon this article at the Tablet: A New Read On Jewish Life, because it mentions one of my books. But I found the discussion fascinating.

Here is the direct link t the posting:http://www.tabletmag.com/life-and-religion/24799/falling-down/

I remember my first time learning that all will die some day, and my despair at trying to grasp the idea that everyone I loved, including myself, were in danger of dying some day. It was New Years; people were braking piñatas and toasting for good life, and I was scared. Non of my parents reassurances--that it will probably wouldn't happen for me in a long time--made me feel safer.

Years latter, when one of my favorite uncles died, I remember that my father struggled over my sisters and my questions of whether he could be sure that our beloved uncle was gone forever. I remember his answer: My uncle's body was still here but his soul had flown away. He was still here (which was the answer I wanted), but he wasn't (which broke my heart)? I was even more confused now! Is it perhaps that ambiguity allows room for false hopes(hope that hurts)?

Being a parent is a heroic job.

Coconut paleta for me, please

The Charlotte Zolotow Awards have been announced and there, as the winner, is my sister's book, "What Can You Do With A Paleta?"! the Zolotow is given annualy to the author of the best picture book text published in the USA in the preceding year--the Newbery of picture books if you ask me. Here is the article from School Library Journal about the award and all the books selected this year.

Another list I am looking at, trying to chose some more books to add to my reading list, is the 2010 Best Books for Young Adults. Find it here.

Yesterday my friend Jim and I went to look for some of these books at The Storyteller here in Lafayette, a bookstore that exclusively sells children's books, and it is right here in my neighborhood. While we were there Jim and I decided to start a new tradition of ourselves. Every month we'll come together to the store and find at least ONE book that we love. Yesterday we both came home with our choice: Henry in Love, by Peter McCarty, have you seen that picture book? Exquisite!
Want to come with us next month?

Celebracion! ALA Awards anounced

While I am sure that everybody is celebrating the ALA award winners already, I am having my own, very early (5;57 am) beautiful moment her with my cat and my sleeping family. The Pura Belpre Awards were announced this morning as well, and now I can tell who the winners are. Yesterday night it was still a secret!:

Pura Belpré (Illustrator) Award honoring a Latino writer and illustrator whose children’s books best portray, affirm and celebrate the Latino cultural experience

“Book Fiesta!: Celebrate Children’s Day/Book Day; Celebremos El día de los niños/El día de los libros,” illustrated by Rafael López, is the Belpré Illustrator Award winner. The book was written by Pat Mora and published by Rayo, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Three Belpré Illustrator Honor Books were selected: “Diego: Bigger Than Life,” illustrated by David Diaz, written by Carmen T. Bernier-Grand and published by Marshall Cavendish Children.

“My Abuelita,” illustrated by Yuyi Morales, written by Tony Johnston and published by Harcourt Children’s Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

“Gracias Thanks,” illustrated by John Parra, written by Pat Mora and published by Lee & Low Books Inc.

Pura Belpré (Author) Award
“Return to Sender,” written by Julia Alvarez, is the Belpré Author Award winner. The book is published by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books.

Two Belpré Author Honor Books were named: “Diego: Bigger Than Life,” written by Carmen T. Bernier-Grand, illustrated by David Diaz and published by Marshall Cavendish Children.


“Federico García Lorca,” written by Georgina Lázaro, illustrated by Enrique S. Moreiro and published by Lectorum Publications Inc.


Who wants to join us to celebrate today! We are going out for dinner and champagne.

Love declaration

Here is a love confession to something old and something new--old like last year old, and I am talking about picture books of course, those that I read as 2009 was dying out and giving room to the New Year.

So, as I was finishing last year, these are the books that made me blush:

Love # 1: Diego: Bigger than Life, by Carmen T. Bernier-Grand and David Diaz.

The most felt book I read last year. If you want to know what I am talking about make sure to read the poem "No More Cezannes". However I was caught from the first book's lines: "What is life but a story? I choose to embellish my life story. / I am DIEGO--the charming, monstrous, caring, hideous, Mexican Muralist."

Love #2: Gracias, Thanks, by Pat Mora and John Parra.

Parra is becoming one of my favorite illustrators; his paintings remind me of living my childhood. Here is Mora's way of reminding us of all the ordinary, yet fantastic things to be grateful for: "For the sun that wakes me up so that I don't sleep for years and years and grow a long white beard, thanks"

Love #3: My Papa Diego and Me. By Guadalupe Rivera Marin and Diego Rivera.

Of course, if a book is illustrated with the paintings of Diego Rivera, the book has to be extraordinary. Even the endpapers are a vision. But what I didn't expect was that this book would be such of such a loving telling. Diego's daughter writes in the introduction, "When most people think of my father, Diego Rivera, they think of him as a famous painter. and they're right, he did grow up to be a famous painter. But before he became a famous artist, he was like you--a child." The selection of paintings are those that Diego painted of children, sometimes of Guadalupe herself, but also of mothers looking for a better life for their children, of piñatas being broken, of a coutry teacher giving reading lessons to children and adults alike. This book feels like looking at the family album while someone tells the stories behind.


Love #4: Jeremy Draws a Monster, by Peter McCarty.
What a detailed simple book! It is an ode to drawing, both in the story and in the art, and since drawing is one of my first loves, well, I adore this book.

Then 2010 began and got in the mail my copy of my first favorite book of the year. So, for something new...

My Shoes and I, by Rene Colato Lainez and Fabricio Vanden Broeck


I heard about this book a few years ago while Rene and I ran into each other boarding a flight to Texas. As Rene talked about writing this story I couldn't wait for this book to be released. Rene tells me that Fabricio actually recreated in the book the same shoes that Rene had when he as a boy came into the USA.

Among the holiday gift guides

A few articles and holiday gift guides have included my books this month.

Just in Case: A Trickster Tale and Spanish Alphabet Book is featured in Latina Magazine along with a small selection of other Latino themed and Spanish Language books here. This list also includes one of my favorite books this year: Animal poems of the Iguazu/ Animalario del Iguazu, by Francisco Alarcon and Maya Christina Gonzales.

The BCCB of the University of Illinois has an annotated list of books for youth 2009, here. My Book Just in Case it is there too.

My newest book, My abuelita, written by Tony Johnston appears in the San Francisco Chronicle Holiday Gifth Guide, and it is recommended in Over The River, Through the Woods: A Literary Visit To Grandma’s House by The Bulletin.

The United Farm Workers store recommends, of course, Harvesting Hope: the Story of Cesar Chavez, and so does the Donnelly/Colt Progressive Resources Catalog. While you are there also check the Peace Bank, a terracotta sphere with the word peace inscribed in many languages ( I am putting that one in my own list).

Now, if looking for a Christmas themed book, here come the recommendations for A Piñata In A Pine Tree, A Latino Twelve Days of Christmas, by Pat Mora, illustrated by Magaly Morales (yes, my sister), at the Contra Costa Times, The Horn Book, Grand Rapids Living, Children's Literature, and School Library Journal.

My personal favorite this season? Besides A Piñata In A Pine Tree, which offers a luminous representation of Latino Christmas, I was captivated by the poetry of Diego: Bigger Than Life by Carmen , Bernier-Grand and David Diaz. A powerful book.

Often people ask me where to find my books or those titles that I talk about, and I always send people to their neighborhood independent bookstore. I also recommend that if the bookstore doesn't currently have those books, to ask the clerk to requested them. Most bookstores will have the book available in a mater of a few days, and this is the best way to let local businesses know about more books that people want. But in case you need online help with obtaining books this holidays, I have included links to Amazon; just click on the titles.

Originally post source: my blog Corazonadas

Things I would love to do some day

this:

Royal de Luxe - LE RENDEZ-VOUS DE BERLIN, DAS WIEDERSEHEN VON BERLIN from Nina. on Vimeo.

NY Public Library's 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing 2009

There is my book!--The New York Public Library released their Children's Books 2009 - 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing.
Yes, that one is mine.

My friend Jim Averbeck and I have been in the look out for evidence in the existence of ghost; more specifically of the famous Mexican ghost of La Llorona).

I became interested since lots of children have reported to me (apparently school visits are a great way to collect testimonials) how THEY or someone in their family have seen or hear La Llorona crying. Have you?

Well, Jim and I have finally collected some terrifying footage, and in honor of my abuelita, who used to scared us children telling us stories, and in honor of all of the children who have told me their terrible tales, here is the video Jim and I put togehter. Watch it with caution:

Ay, Llorona from Yuyi Morales on Vimeo.

Originally post source: my blog Corazonadas

Nick Glass came visit last spring and we had a day of talking, filming, and working (and some eating of tortas de queso fresco too), and the result of his visit is now my author program available at Teaching Books Net.

If you are not familiar with Nick's work yet, let me tell you that Teaching Books Net is an amazing resource for exploring children's and young adult books and their authors. The program that Nick created about me and my work includes two mini-documentary movies (one of them in Spanish), a written interview, movie transcripts, Bibliography, and many other resources like name pronunciation for children to learn how to pronounce the names of authors like me that have weird names. You can find it all here.

Yeah, there are lots of other authors too, like my beloved Ashley Brian, the incredible Peter Sis, and many more--so worth cheking it out.

Six years, three years—oh dear, some times it takes a lot of time (and a big camera) to illustrate a book

I have been so absorbed in projects that I haven’t had a chance to celebrate that my newest book, My Abuelita, written by Tony Johnston, has hit the shelves this fall. There are many reasons for me to be excited about this book, but the most important one is that it was a challenge to illustrate it, and that I did it.
And so, in the spirit of a little release celebration, I though I would show how My Abuelita was made.
Care to find out?

Making My Abuelita from Yuyi Morales on Vimeo.

Six years. In 2003, when I signed the contract to create the illustrations for My Abuelita, written by Tony Johnston, I didn’t anticipate that it would take me this long to see the work completed. But at the time I had other books to finish before I could begin any new project, and so time began to pass.

Time passing is a good opportunity for daydreaming. Daydreaming is an opportunity for imagining. And imagining is how my illustrations start.

During the years I needed to complete other books, I imagined how the illustrations for My Abuelita would look someday. When it comes to my work, I don’t really imagine things like a character’s features or the colors of skin and clothes. Instead, I imagine possibilities. And so I began imagining the possibility of making the illustrations for My Abuelita not with paintings, as I had done with all of my previous books, but utilizing something I had long adored: dolls and puppets.

When I had just arrived in the USA from Mexico, I fell in love with making puppets. I learned about it from books I borrowed from the library. It was through making puppets that I began exploring the creation of my own stories and characters, which eventually led me to create my own books. Yet I have never stopped loving the wonder of inanimate objects moving, posing, and coming alive to enact stories.

The more imagining I did, the crazier the idea of using puppets became. This seemed like a project that would require many different kinds of techniques: sculpting, sewing, painting, photography, digital work. Could I really do this all by myself? How was I going to make rigid puppets have facial expression? What would happen to the curved lines I like to use in my work? Could I still keep a sense of movement flooding my illustrations if I had to build them rather than paint them? Would I need to hire a photographer, and would he or she be in tune with the vision I had of my work? And more important, what would my publisher think about it? (They scratched their chins. “Let us see,” they said. “Try it.”)

In 2006 I finally started working on My Abuelita, a story of a grandmother and her grandchild living together and bonding through imagination and storytelling. By then I had closed my eyes to my own doubts. I had decided to use puppets and props to make scenes, buy my husband, Tim, the camera he’d always wanted, and finish the illustrations using digital media. There were still plenty of things I didn’t know how I would do, but I trusted that I would find a way of learning—I would study or ask people to teach me, and one way or another I would figure it all out.

The work began with bad drawings, as usual. My first attempts always produce the simplest and roughest drawings. They are stick people without features or details—pure shape and energy. Later, based on the text, I began refining my drawings to conjure this grandmother shaped like a pumpkin, her loving grandchild, and their cat, Frida Kahlo.
As I was establishing the look of my characters in sketches, I began working on thumbnails, small drawings where I concentrate on the compositional and storytelling elements of the 32 pages of the book. While in the past I have used my thumbnails as the road map for drawing refined sketches and ultimately paintings, this time my thumbnails were the reference for creating three-dimensional scenes. In these thumbnails, all of the characters, places, situations, attitudes, and objects in every scene were established.

With my general plan for the book visually laid down, it was time to begin building the characters and elements that would appear in the illustrations. I wrote down a list so that I would not forget anyone.

I have made puppets before; papier-mâché pulp is my favorite construction material. But I knew that My Abuelita needed puppets that would withstand extensive maneuvering. I would need to position them in diverse poses and attitudes, and they would need to stay. So I began studying stop-motion animation techniques.

On a wire structure I built by twisting wire and wrapping silk thread, I sculpted my characters. I used polymer clay, which stays soft and malleable while working, but hardens when baked in a kitchen oven. Because I needed my characters to move, I left bare wire joints for the neck, knees, wrist, fingers, waists, and more. Later I would cover the joints digitally. Once baked and hardened, I primed the figures and began to paint them. I decided then to give my puppets features but not expressions (including no eyes), so that later I could create expressions digitally for the different moments in the story.

For Frida the cat, I mulled over how to make her fuzzy. I found my answer in felting. Using a special needle with an indentation on the tip, I learned to clump felt fibers over my wire cat skeleton and sculpt them into the shape I wanted. The hair of Abuelita and her grandchild were also made with this technique.

Next I sewed their little dresses, pants, and shirts. The boy’s shirt is my favorite because I put it together with fabric printed with motifs based on a Mexican Loteria game. El corazón card became the front; el pájaro card is on the back. For many of the linens and clothes, I bought fabrics and laces in Mexico; many are common fabrics that have been used for generations.

Everything from little bedroom slippers to little toys, beds, spoons, a feathered crown, and more had to be created. I painted the image of the artist Frida Kahlo with my computer, printed it on fabric, then sewed it into a lace pillow for Abuelita. Some objects, like Abuelita’s iron bed, I designed while I was in Mexico visiting my family. There I found a metal worker who, following my drawing, cut and soldered the bed for me. Other elements, like the clay dishes Abuelita and her grandchild use at breakfast, are toy crafts played with by children in Mexico. I bought mine in el mercado, my hometown’s market. To create the metal mirror in Abuelita’s house, I embossed a sheet of aluminum foil in the style of traditional Mexican silver works.

My Abuelita is a story that honors both everyday life and imagination. These two worlds come together in the story, and they needed to come together in the illustrations as well, while still being distinguishable from each other. But how? I decided to depict the real world of Abuelita’s family with my three-dimensional creations; their imaginary world would be portrayed in my paintings.

And so the images began developing through an amalgam of different techniques. In my husband’s photography studio, we propped up the walls of Abuelita’s house, which were boards that I textured and painted. Using my early thumbnails as storyboards, we furnished every scene with the props I had made, and we positioned the puppets as they enacted the story in front of the camera. Depending on their complexity, setting up the scenes to be photographed took from one to three days each.

Lighting played a big role. From illuminating the general scene to adding glow and shadows to each puppet, the process was handled by Tim. He listened to and interpreted my lighting wishes, experimented with different approaches, positioned photographic lamps, and even constructed miniature reflectors and small light boxes in order to concentrate light on the smallest of characters.

Eighteen high-resolution photographs were taken to create the book. One by one I uploaded them to my computer so that I could digitally finish in Photoshop. The list of work to do was long:

Abuelita, her grandchild, and Frida Khalo the cat had to be given eyes and expression. Sometimes whole eyelids, mouths, and cheeks were digitally destructed and reconstructed in order to give their faces a more realistic expression.

Skin was built wherever bare wire joints showed. Fingers and toes were repositioned so that they would be in visual tune with what the characters were doing and feeling.

Some scenes required that new glows and shadows be manually redrawn.

Real food was cooked, photographed, and digitally served in the photographed dishes.

A model car that was smaller than we needed had to be seamlessly adapted to the driving scene.

The alligator clamps, clay, pins, strings, and any other tools that kept the puppets, floors, walls, and props in place had to be erased.

And the list continued.

One of the last steps was the blending of the imaginary world with the real one: my paintings had to be integrated into the photographs. Using my computer, I layered every photograph with a painting, one on top of the other, and blended them together as one. I erased some parts and redrew others. I extracted or copied pieces of the images, grabbing colors and textures, and then moved them where I needed them. In a way this felt as if I were sculpting the illustrations—not much different than my adding, extracting, and moving clay when I sculpted my puppets over the wire armature.

Then, after about three years, I was done!

Illustrating is a series of choices. I give voice to my work by choosing ideas, possibilities, and ways of using art (and not my ability to draw, my painting skills, or how good or bad I am at anything). I hope that the way I chose to tell the story of My Abuelita comes out with a voice “as round as dimes and as wild as blossoms blooming” and that even Abuelita would be proud.

Now that My Abuelita is long finished and is already a completed book, what I keep closest to me is that fantastic feeling of being at the studio, setting the puppets in the scenes. No matter how tired I was or how many times we reset the puppets (which often moved or fell, crashing the whole scene), it always made me squirm with pure delight to have Abuelita, her grandchild, and Frida the cat bring to life a scene I had only imagined. How I had dreamed of this perfect moment, ever since I was a child playing with my dolls.

Ok now, Ok now...Nevada was great, but I suck as a mentor

After six months of working at the SCBWI Nevada Mentorship Program, I have decided I make a terrible mentor. Here are the reasons:

One. What do I know about how other people should write their stories, or make their illustrations? All I know is how I do it. But nobody wants to be me; everybody wants to be themselves, right?

Two. My English is terrible, my words are endless, which means that anybody who is working with me will hear more words from me than he or she can actually understand.

Three. I work even in my sleep. There is not time for anything else. People who work with me in their projects have to put up with me not having time for nothing.

Four. I have a very capricious personal taste for stories and art. My opinions are tinted.

Five. I am the emotional type, I can't do anything without feeling heart pains.

Six. I can't make you published, really.

Seven. I am afraid of sleeping in that hotel in Virginia City infested with ghost--where the mentorship program and conference took place.

Eight. People know better what is best for them. If you are smart, you don't want me as a mentor.

Nine. I am vegetarian.

Ten. People invite me to be a mentor to aspiring authors and illustrators, and then I make videos about it (sight).

If you don't believe me, here is the evidence.
but I recommend you see first David After Dentist, which was our video muse.





And so, here is Art Director After Conference, filmed and produced by Jim Averbeck, Laurent Linn (art director at Simon & Schuster), and Truly Yours.
You are warned now.

Time to read in New York

Let's go read:

My book Just in Case: A Trickster Tale and Spanish Alphabet Book has been selected as one of the “Top 20 Favorite Read-Aloud Stories” for the New York Times sponsored Great Children’s Read event.

This means that if, on October 4, you go to Columbia University, at exactly 10:45, actor Dominic Colon will be doing a reading of my book. the event is large, so be there for plenty of other readers. Here you can find the books reading list and schedule

Enjoy!

Books in the family--and how everybody leaves me behind

When my mother came to visit a few winters ago, I gave her a list of request: no sweeping my house, no doing my dishes, no trying to pick up my mess, to cook only if she wanted, and to, please, please, write down her childhood memories.
Against my request, she did all of the above.
With the diligence of an insect my mother sat at my computer and wrote down a hundred and so pages of the things she remember about growing up. At the end of her visit, and having only recounted half of her life, she wrapped up her writing with a "to be continued" and handed me her witting.

It took me about a year to revise and proof read, format the text and design a cover in my free time, until finally by next Christmas I was able to surprise her with copies of her printed memoir.

Earlier this year I received a notice from the printing house that informed me that now anyone can find it in Amazon, making my mother the first person in my family to released a book this year.

My mother visited us for a few weeks this summer too, and I saw it with my own eyes: she is nearly done writing her second installment.

Then there is my sister, Magaly. She is the youngest of us three sisters; I am the oldest. But very early Magaly grew taller than me, developed feet larger than mine, swam faster than I could attempt, could hold her breath longer too, and when she began drawing at an early age, everybody I knew, including me, were left in the dust.

So, of course, she has not one but two books published this year:

Here is an excerpt from a review of What Can You do With A Paleta, a book written by Carmen Tafolla:

“The lyrical prose is equally beautiful in both languages. Morales uses broad, curvy brushstrokes of contrasting bright and fruity colors to capture the look of Mexican folk art. The characters’ faces are round with slightly slanted eyes and rendered in golden shades of burnt sienna...this joyful celebration of barrio life is a must-have for children’s collections.”
--School Libray Journal

Magaly's colaboration with Pat Mora resulted in her second nook this year, A Piñata In A Pine Tree.


Here are some words from Kirkus review:

"Mora blends Latino holiday traditions of her native Southwest with some from Mexico. The gifts are ethnic dishes like pastelitos, ornaments like paper lanterns-luminarias-and spinning tops-trompos-and Mexican folk-art-styled figures. Morales's acrylic paintings complement the song, showing, in the background, family members engaged in activities that are revealed on the last page along with the identity of the amiga-a new little sister."

Just like I saw my mother's, I also witnessed these books of my sister develop. While Magaly worked on her illustrations, we constantly talked and looked at what she was creating.
Ever since then, I been trying to make my feet grow, and I have also been practicing holding my breath longer, because, you see, my family is leaving me behind and I don't know what else to do...