Tomás Rivera Book Award Recipients

¡Buenos días a todos y todas! Continuing with our 2017 Latinx children’s and young adult literature award winner announcements, which included the Américas Award and Pura Belpré Award recipients, today I will be announcing the winners of the 2017 Tomás Rivera Book Award Winners. The Tomás Rivera Book Award was established in 1995 by Texas State University College of Education, and was developed to honor authors, illustrators and publishers depicting the Mexican American experience. It was named after Dr. Tomás Rivera, poet, author, educator, and alumnus of Texas State University.

The 2017 Tomás Rivera Book Award Winners include one children’s book and one young adult book. If interested, you can follow the Tomás Rivera Book Award on Facebook, and you can also check out past awards on Texas State University College of Education’s website. We hope some of these titles make it to your classroom bookshelves!

Saludos,

Kalyn

 

2017 Award Winners

Maybe Something Beautiful: How Art Transformed a Neighborhood
written by Isabel Campoy and Theresa Howell and illustrated by Rafael López. HMH Books for Young Readers, 2016. ISBN: 978-0544357693

Maybe Something Beautiful: How Art Transformed a Neighborhood is the triumph of a community against the darker forces of social decay. What good can a splash of color do in a community of gray? As Mira and her neighbors discover, more than you might ever imagine!

Based on the true story of the Urban Art Trail in San Diego, California, Maybe Something Beautiful reveals how art can inspire transformation—and how even the smallest artists can accomplish something big.

The Memory of Light written by Francisco X. Stork. Arthur A. Levine Books, 2016. ISBN: 978-0545474320.

In The Memory of Light, Stork tells the story of 16-year-old Vicky Cruz and her experiences and recovery after an attempted suicide. When Vicky wakes up in the Lakeview Hospital, she knows one thing: After her suicide attempt, she shouldn’t be alive. But then she meets Mona, the live wire; Gabriel, the saint; E.M., always angry; and Dr. Desai, a quiet force. With stories and honesty, kindness and hard work, they push her to reconsider her life before Lakeview, and offer her an acceptance she’s never had. But Vicky’s newfound peace is as fragile as the roses that grow around the hospital. And when a crisis forces the group to split up, sending Vick back to the life that drove her to suicide, she must try to find her own courage and strength.

Inspired in part by the author’s own experience with depression, The Memory of Light is the rare young adult novel that focuses not on the events leading up to a suicide attempt, but the recovery from one – about living when life doesn’t seem worth it, and how we go on anyway.

 

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¡Mira, Look!: Francisco X. Stork

Photo courtesy of Francisco Stork’s website

As we have seen so far this year, there are many things that set Hispanic authors apart in the literary world. This week, we are going to see yet another way that an author who writes literature for young adults takes his experiences as a Mexican-American youth and creatively interprets them for young people.  We will be looking at the work of author Francisco X. Stork.

Stork was born in Mexico in the early 1950s to a single mother. As a child, his family moved from Mexico to El Paso, Texas because his step-father was in search of work. It was his step-father who gave him his first portable typewriter for his seventh birthday when Stork announced he wanted to be a writer.

Book Review: Marcelo in the Real World

Marcelo in the Real World
Written by Francisco X. Stork
Published by Scholastic Books, 2009
ISBN:  9780545056908
Age Level: Ages 14 and up

Description (From GoodReads):

Marcelo Sandoval hears music no one else can hear–part of the autism-like impairment no doctor has been able to identify–and he’s always attended a special school where his differences have been protected. But the summer after his junior year, his father demands that Marcelo work in his law firm’s mailroom in order to experience “the real world.” There Marcelo meets Jasmine, his beautiful and surprising coworker, and Wendell, the son of another partner in the firm.

He learns about competition and jealousy, anger and desire. But it’s a picture he finds in a file — a picture of a girl with half a face — that truly connects him with the real world: its suffering, its injustice, and what he can do to fight.

 Reminiscent of “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” in the intensity and purity of its voice, this extraordinary novel is a love story, a legal drama, and a celebration of the music each of us hears inside.

My thoughts:

Marcelo has become one of my favorite protagonists.  He is very different from many of the main characters in other books we’ve read here at Vamos a Leer.  Marcelo is a seventeen year old on the autism spectrum.  He says of himself, “. . .the closest description of my condition is Asperger’s syndrome. . .” (p. 55).  How often are we given a book that provides our students any insight into what it might be like to experience the world with autism or Asperger’s syndrome?  This alone makes it a significant book. 

Our Next Good Read. . .Marcelo in the Real World

Join us November 4th at Bookworks from 5:00-7:00 pm to discuss our next book.  We are reading Marcelo in the Real World (Ages 12 and up) by Francisco X. Stork.

Here’s a sneak peek into the book: (from Goodreads)

Marcelo Sandoval hears music no one else can hear–part of the autism-like impairment no doctor has been able to identify–and he’s always attended a special school where his differences have been protected. But the summer after his junior year, his father demands that Marcelo work in his law firm’s mailroom in order to experience “the real world.” There Marcelo meets Jasmine, his beautiful and surprising coworker, and Wendell, the son of another partner in the firm.

Book Giveaway!! Marcelo in the Read World

How creative are they at http://www.yahighway.com?! The book cover carved into a pumpkin!

We’re giving away a copy of Marcelo in the Real World written by Francisco X. Stork–our featured novel for November’s book group meeting!! Check out the following review from Horn Book:

“Seventeen-year-old Marcelo Sandoval marches to the beat of a different drummer – literally. He perceives internal music in his head; he is obsessed with religion; he has difficulty interacting with others – behaviors that place him at the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum. He is happy at Paterson, the special-education school he’s attended since first grade, and life is comfortable. Then his father proposes an unwelcome deal: if Marcelo proves successful in “the real world” by working in the mailroom at his law firm over the summer he will be allowed to choose between returning to his beloved Paterson or attending – as his father prefers – a regular high school. But as Marcelo begins his summer job, he finds his moral compass tested just as much as his coping and social skills. His loyalty is divided on multiple levels: between his father and the law firm, between a plaintiff and the law firm, between the privileged son of his father’s law partner who befriends him with dubious motives and the beautiful co-worker who gradually comes to care deeply for him. While the voice is reminiscent of the narrator of Haddon’s Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – both have an appealing blend of naivete and wisdom – Marcelo has the superior character development. His inspiring, brave journey into the real world will likely engender a fierce protective instinct in readers, ratcheting up the tension as the plot winds to its sweet, satisfying denouement. It is the rare novel that reaffirms a belief in goodness;rarer still is one that does so this emphatically.” j.h. Starred – Horn Book March/April, 2009