Book Fiesta Selected for RIF's Multicultural Booklist

Pat’s picture book about El día de los niños/El día de los libros, Children's Day/Book Day, Book Fiesta!,  was selected as one of forty-five titles on RIF’s (Reading is Fundamental) 2011-2012 Multicultural Booklist. The collection celebrates cultures from all over the world and can be used with Grades K-4.

A Letter to Child Readers

Each year Pat writes a letter to her young readers. You can read this year's letter below and earlier letters are archived on Pat's website.  Teachers, feel free to use this letter for Author Studies or other language arts activities.

Dear Girls and Boys,

Are you patient? I’m not. Right now, far away from me, illustrators are working on art for some of my new books. I can’t wait to see the sketches, and I can’t wait to hold the finished books in my hands. I always have to wait years for that special moment. I don’t get to talk to the illustrators ahead and sometimes I never meet them. I sure like to though.

What do you like to do best: write or draw? Maybe you can do both, or maybe you do the writing and your friend or brother or sister or cousin can illustrate your words. It’s fun to make your own books at school, the library and at home.

I’m a writer because I’m a reader. I love to read! Do you know how important being a good reader is? It helps you in all your classes, it helps you be a good writer, and reading is fun. If you’re not a good reader now, start practicing. Read every day—for you. Find books about the things you like—horses, bugs, bikes—and read about them. Then you can write your own new book and share it with your family, teacher or friend.

My next book, THE BEAUTIFUL LADY: LA SEÑORA DE GUDALUPE will be out at this time next year. It’s an old story about a special lady who years ago appeared on a hill in Mexico. I can’t wait to see it! As always, I’m busy working on new books too.

I hope you’ll visit my website and see all my books and even some family photos. You can write and tell me what you liked.

Your reading friend,

Pat Mora


 2012: 20th Anniversary





El día del amor y la amistad

My favorite translation of Valentine’s Day in Spanish is El día del amor y la amistad, love and friendship day. Doesn’t the addition of friendship make the red-heart-and-sweets-day even more special? Friends have always been an important part of my life: when I was growing up in El Paso, when I taught, and when I was a university administrator. I’m too private to be a Facebook person, but now that I work at home, through phone and e-mail, in addition to my family and long-time friends, I have amigas and amigos who are book friends: authors, illustrators, librarians, educators, members of the publishing world, and my special Día buddies who promote bookjoy all year long. May we cherish those who help us laugh and who believe in us.

photo credit: misfitsalon.blogspot.com

Creativity Interview: Yuyi Morales

Like many, I admire the multiple talents of Yuyi Morales—author, illustrator, videographer, moving speaker. I also admire Yuyi's creative spirit. Many thanks, Yuyi, for making time for this interview.

1. What were you like as a child?
YM: A few things that described me as a child:
1. I liked drawing, and I practiced so much that I could draw my own face from memory.
2. I was obsessed with UFOs and constantly feared that extraterrestrials were coming to take me with them.
3. I liked reading, so I devoured all of the comic magazines my father bought on Sundays, the encyclopedia my mother bought for my sisters and I, and many of my father's books, all of which were not for children.
4. When I was five my mother taught me how to crochet, and I made myself a colorful vest and a hat. She also taught me how to knit and use the sewing machine. At school, she would encourage me transform simple school projects and written assignments into models, drawings, and little books.
5. I didn't have many friends, I was what people in Mexico call “seria”, which meant that I didn't talk or smile much.

2. My sense is that you have always thought of yourself as creative. How do you nurture your creativity?
YM: Everything in my life is an art project. Just like my mother helped me make simple tasks, like my homework, into creative endeavors, nowadays, most of the things that happen during my daily life, I tend to do it creatively. I love to read, and I have a great need for storytelling. I could watch movies everyday (but I don't because most nights I go to bed late drawing or painting). I like gardening and I look for the compositions and the mixing of colors. I like listening to music, and although I am not a musician, I like to make songs. I love to dance and so I take lessons, and I often break into dancing while I am working. I like taking photographs and sharing them. And I like making friends and loving them. And to me it is all art.

3. Is there a special space that helps you be creative?YM: My studio is the best place in the world. In my studio there is space to daydream, and there is space to work. Having tools around me excites me. I get carried away by thinking about what I could to with materials. But I also need inspiration and references, so having things to look at, as well as places for research such as the library and the internet, give me an urge to create.

4. What are your challenges at this point in your career?
YM: Time is one of my main challenges. I tend to want to have things to materialize immediately. So I have had to learn to be patient, to take my time, and to be gentle with myself and my work. Although I tend to be impatient, I try to take time to exercise, to learn new things, to be with my friends, family, and the people I love, and time to have sacred things in my life. Then, when I am in my studio, I constantly remind myself that steady work will give me the results I want.

5. You have a very intriguing web site. Did you design it yourself?
YM: Yes, I designed it myself a long time ago. At the time, I wanted to have a web site, and not knowing how to get someone to do what I wanted, I decided to learn to do it myself. My husband helped me choose a good book where I could learn HTML. Most of what I did was to take the same approach I use with my art: I played with it. The web page became another blank canvas to be creative with. The result seems to be  less functional and more surprising--you just never know what you might find there.

6. You were an early Día supporter. Tell us why and how you think we all could be more creative in promoting Día.
YM: To me Día de los Niños is a very significant day, because I grew up in Mexico where ever since I can remember, my family always celebrated it. When I arrived at the USA, I found myself celebrating alone with my infant son. I had no one else to celebrate it with. Years later, when I was already a published author, I began to be asked to come to libraries to celebrate with hundreds of children, and I couldn't have been more delighted! What was even better was that Día del Niño had been paired with something else I loved: books and reading.

Día de los Niños, Día de los Libros, is one of my favorite days of the year. I am sure that many people have come up with fantastic ideas to celebrate this day; my favorites would be the ones that bring together adults and children through books. Día de los Niños, Día de los Libros is not only a day for children to enjoy and love books, but is also a day for us, adults, to love and celebrate our children by sharing books, reading with them, and connecting forever in that way.

7. Any upcoming projects you want to share with us?
YM: I am currently putting the final touches to a book I wrote titled Niño. In this book there will be a lot of action, and more than one scary character brought from my childhood in Mexico. Also, I am working in a book I wrote about Frida Kahlo, and I have started illustrating a book about the poet Pablo Neruda.

8. How does Yuyi relax?
YM: I have my favorite spot in my garden where two colorful hammocks hang. There, when I need a good time to just be, I swing in one of them looking at the sky and the mulberry tree that holds them. Some times I fall asleep, just like when I was a baby and my mother lullabyed me to sleep, swinging in my crib made of a box weaved into a hammock above my parents bed. I close my eyes, and I am whole again.

Visit Yuyi's blog, Corazonadas.

Bookjoy Celebrations

How often do you feel too busy? I seem to feel that way off and on all day. I know: I’m trying to do too much: be present for family and friends, dive into new manuscripts, help promote Día, and share bookjoy, la alegría en los libros. Since I long to send the people I care about a cheerful card occasionally, to lift their/your spirits, this year I'll be sending bookjoy celebrations. Below is the first.

I welcome your collaboration. Send your favorite quotes about reading, books, poetry; brief original poems, a few lines from writing you love, visuals, ideas, etc. to bookjoyATpatmora.com . (We’ll credit you, of course.)

Share Bookjoy all year with friends, family, students, colleagues, children, seniors, neighbors!

Savor Silence?

My New Year’s resolutions always include 1) create more writing time and 2) be a more effective advocate. There’s an inherent tension between these two goals. When I avoid e-mail and devote myself to a writing project, ah! I feel a special pleasure since I relish the time to create on the page, to explore the possibilities of an evolving manuscript. I love to write which for me means: I need quiet.

Some authors manage to write in coffee shops and cafes while I’d stop the refrigerator motor if I could. I savor total silence. A professor who teaches my book, Zing! Seven Creativity Practices for Educators and Students to future writing teachers tells me that the students are most uncomfortable with the second suggested practice: Enjoy quiet. “Really?” I ask surprised. It seems that quiet made the students uncomfortable, nervous. Indeed, their world is probably full of noise--radio, iPods, music in restaurants, elevators, bars, malls; and group sessions in all areas of education and the work place.

A recent article in The New York Times, “The Rise of the New Groupthink,” includes Picasso’s words, “Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.” Eek! Again in 2012, I say to myself, “Pat, you’ve got to create more quiet for writing. Stay off e-mail.”

It’s not that I like e-mail (except with family and friends), but it is my connection to the amazing and committed advocates with whom I have the honor to work.

Human creativity is amazing and given our diversity—introverts/extroverts, tidy/messy, sober/silly, Type A/Type B, etc.—we need varying circumstances to produce our unique work. Important as sharing bookjoy is to me, though, I long to write more and better, so: silence in my future.

What do you need to be creative?

(photo credit: Silence by wickednox1)

Philadelphia Zoo Launches $10,000 University UNLESS Prize Challenge to Help Save Orangutans from Extinction

My daughter Libby Martinez is one of the architects of this exciting project. Please spread the word.

In a groundbreaking initiative, the Philadelphia Zoo, America’s first Zoo, is inviting university students across the United States to join their efforts to save the critically endangered orangutan by competing to win the 2012 University UNLESS Prize. The challenge issued to university students is to develop the most innovative mobile device application to link consumers with palm oil product manufacturers and help increase market demand for certified sustainable palm oil. All students nationwide who are enrolled in a university degree program are eligible to compete. The winning team in the 2012 University UNLESS Prize challenge will be awarded $10,000.

Palm oil is the world’s most widely-produced vegetable oil and is found in a wide array of consumer products including cookies, crackers, breakfast cereals, chips, chocolate and ice cream. According to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, palm oil can be found in almost 50% of packaged food and is an ingredient in many items including shampoo, cosmetics, lipstick and lotion. Palm oil cultivation is currently one of the leading causes of deforestation worldwide and with the rapid destruction of ecologically-complex rainforests in Sumatra and Borneo, numerous species, including orangutans, are facing extinction in the wild. If the nature of palm oil production does not change, it is estimated that wild orangutans will become extinct in as few as 25 years.

The title of the 2012 University UNLESS Prize is inspired by the timeless words of Dr. Seuss in The Lorax - “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” For additional information, please visit http://www.philadelphiazoo.org/universityunlessprize/.

Apply Now for the USBBY Bridge to Understanding Award

The USBBY (United States Board on Books for Young People) Bridge to Understanding Award Committee seeks to identify and honor innovative programs that use children's literature as a way to promote international understanding.

Schools, libraries, scout troops, clubs and bookstores are all eligible for this award. Does your school or library program or do you know of another organization that "promotes reading as a way to expand a child's world"?

Learn more about the award, view information about past winners, and access entry, criteria, and application forms here. Submission deadline for the next award is January 31, 2012.

Hooray for Walter Dean Myers!

What wonderful news: esteemed author Walter Dean Myers has been named the third National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. On NPR this week, I heard an interview with Myers who said that his theme would be “Reading is not optional.” He spoke eloquently (as he always does) about how essential family reading is for our young people to have productive futures. Those of us who work on Día and are looking forward to its 16th anniversary in April agree totally.

Some years back, I’d spoken in one of the tents at the National Book Festival and then had the opportunity to stand at the back of a neighboring tent and hear Walter. He said that in many homes the dinner table is a place for families to discuss their days and complex issues and values. He went on to say that many of our young people don’t have such dinner table discussions and that his books are his way of helping young people work through life’s decisions and challenges. Walter Dean Myers is such a honorable man. How fortunate all of us involved in literature for young people are to have him as our ambassador.

Happy Holidays

Wishing you happy holidays and may 2012 be a year of good health, good work, bookjoy and laughter.
Pat

Celebrating Las Posadas

Jeanette Larson posted about "Celebrating Las Posadas" on the ALSC blog and mentioned Pat's book Gift of the Poinsettia/ El regalo de la flor de nochebuena. Las Posadas re-enacts Joseph and Mary's journey to Bethlehem and is celebrated throughout Latin America.

Bookjoy at NCTE

As a former English teacher, there’s always something exciting for me about being invited to speak at NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English). I joked with the Random House team (the press that was kind enough to sponsor me) that many teens might shiver at the thought of the two Chicago hotels full of English teachers.

I had the pleasure of preparing for two programs. I say “pleasure” because I love presenting as much as I love writing and because such preparations are opportunities to think, and we all know that creating thinking time can be a challenge. I joined poet Joyce Sidman and two faculty members in offering a master class on “Poetic Voices: Writing, Reading and Responding to Poetry.” Frankly, I seldom have the opportunity to hear another writer, and I so enjoyed hearing Joyce read her fine poems and explain how a poem evolves for her. For the first time, I prepared a PowerPoint of my books of poems and rhymes in the order the books were published. In addition to reading some poems especially from Dizzy in Your Eyes: Poems About Love, I asked the audience to think about what voices (and languages) are included in our poetry. I was asking: who belongs in poems and what do poets look like?

I was introduced at the Conference on English (CEL) breakfast by my friend Dr. R. Joseph Rodríguez from the University of Texas. Joseph, a dear friend, often knows my work better than I do. I struggle almost daily to find time to continue my own writing and to promote Día  and family literacy. I seldom consciously sit and think about leadership, also a topic of great interest to me. My title, “Creatively Practicing Resilience: The Zing of Bookjoy” allowed me to address some of my key themes but also to explore potential: our personal potential as leaders, the potential of the literature and literacy field, and the potential of our collaborators.

May we all be bolder and more creative leaders in 2012! Wishing you health, happiness and bookjoy.

In 1986, I was fortunate to receive a Kellogg National Leadership Fellowship, a three-year experience that greatly enriched my life. In 2001, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation published a book entitled, Leading from the Heart: The Passion to Make a Difference. My essay and its introduction are from that book. It’s interesting how many of the ideas in this piece are part of ZING! published in 2010.