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For Immediate Release, January
12, 2004
My
Diary From Here to There A 2004 Pura Belpré Author Honor Book Story by Amada Irma Perez San Francisco, CA—Children's Book Press is very proud to announce that My Diary From Here to There / Mi diario de aqui hasta allá, written by Amada Irma Perez and illustrated by Maya Christina Gonzalez (Aug. 2002, $16.95), was awarded with a 2004 Pura Belpré Author Honor Award. In My Diary from Here to There, a young girl keeps a diary of her family's move from Ciudad Juarez, in northern Mexico, to Los Angeles, California. Like every child who has been uprooted and moved to a new home, Amada expresses her fear, excitement, and curiosity about her future home. She writes about packing up her house and saying goodbye to friends and family, traveling across the desert to Tijuana, and about dealing with her five rambunctious younger brothers. She misses her father, who has crossed the border ahead of the family to procure green cards for them and writes to his daughter of meeting Cesar Chavez. Despite all of her fears and questions, Amada learns that with her family's love and belief in her own strength, she can make any journey and weather any change. This book revisits the family that children got to know and love in Pérez's first book, My Very Own Room/ Mi propio cuartito. The Pura Belpré Award, established in 1996, is presented to a Latino/Latina writer and illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth. It is co-sponsored by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA) and the National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish-Speaking (REFORMA), an ALA Affiliate. The award is named after Pura Belpré, the first Latina librarian from the New York Public Library. As a children's librarian, storyteller, and author, she enriched the lives of Puerto Rican children in the U.S.A. through her pioneering work of preserving and disseminating Puerto Rican folklore. The awards are given biennially. Children's Book Press is a nonprofit publisher of quality children's literature from Latino, African American, Asian American and Native American communities. At its inception in 1975, Children's Book Press was a pioneer in creating an authentic literature of inclusion to give young people a sense of their own ethnic history and importance. The press focuses on publishing contemporary stories of children's experiences from these communities in the United States, often in a bilingual format. My Diary from Here to There / Mi diario de aquí hasta
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