Georgette Dorn: 
My name is Georgette Dorn.   I am the Chief of the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress.  It is a great pleasure to welcome you in the name of the Hispanic Division and the Center for the Book for sponsoring this event with the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee and Julie Kline.

As you know the Hispanic Collection at the Library of Congress comprises 13 million items in books, periodicals, recordings, prints, photographs and maps.  It's a really, really rich collection, and also a lot of children's books.  And of all these wonderful prize-winning books and honor books, we already or hope to get in our collections.  So it's a great pleasure, once again, to welcome the Americas Award.  We've done this every year since 1993.  So I think all of them except one? So again, thank you very much for coming and I'll introduce you to Julie Kline.  

Julie Kline: 
Good morning.  It's nice when you all talk back, thank you.

[ laughter ]

It's a pleasure to be here another year for recognizing winners of the Americas Award for children's and young adult literature.

Are you coming up? Come here.

[ laughter ]

And this is my helper every year, Andy Kline.

Do your "Hi."

Andy Kline:
 Hi!

Julie Kline: 
Thank you.

[ laughter ]

Ok.  We're very pleased for recognizing two books this year.  The Poet Slave of Cuba, written by Margarita Engle, and illustrated by Sean Qualls, and Josias, Hold the Book, written by Jennifer Elvgren.  I try to keep looking in the right direction -- and illustrated by Nicole Tadgell.  The first published by Holtz, The Poet Slave of Cuba, and the second, Josias, published by Boyds Mills.

Let me just tell you a little bit about the Americas Award.  It's sponsored by something called the Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs, which is a national organization to which Latin American Studies Programs belongs, and it's existed since the 1960s to encourage teaching and outreach about Latin America and the Caribbean.  
It began the Americas Award in 1993.

The book award -- this always gives me something handy to say.  Let me give you the description.  It's given in recognition of U.S. works of fiction, poetry folklore or selected nonfiction, from picture books to works of young adults published in the previous year in English or Spanish that authentically and engagingly portray Latin America and the Caribbean or Latinos in the U.S.  By combining both and linking the Americas, the Award reaches beyond geographic borders, as well as multi-cultural international boundaries focusing instead upon cultural heritages within the hemisphere.  

The award winners and commended titles are selected for their distinctive literary quality, cultural contextualization, exceptional integration of text illustration and design and potential for classroom use.  I want to stress one of those criteria because we were just talking about it beforehand.  This is an award that's looking at the book as a whole.  So it's very important to us to recognize the authors and the illustrators who created the books.  And we have some fine examples of that this year.  

And if you've come to these awards or paid attention to the commended list every year, the winners have really done what we hoped to set out to do from the beginning, which is to celebrate the cultural diversity of the Americas.  We've had everything from -- of book set during Carnival in Ponce, in Puerto Rico.  We've had a book about a family of Chinese-Guatemalan origin operating their store in Guatemala City.  We've had novels in verse: Crash Boom Love, by Juan Felipe Herrera.  It really has done exactly that and I think the books this year are joining fine ranks in terms of presenting what that diversity is.

The books are reviewed, and I have to say they get about 60 books to look at, by a national committee.  It's a mix of librarians, K-12 teachers, university specialists in children's books.  We have five members to the committee.  This year we had Marsha Cobb, who is an elementary school teacher at Polser in Texas.  We had Roslyn Anareios-Santavicca [ spelled phonetically ], who is the outreach coordinator at the Center for Latin American Studies, University of Pittsburgh.  Patricia Velasco with Teacher's College at Columbia University.  The Chair's Maria Mena of the public library in Tallahassee, Florida.  And here with us today, Charlene Barnes, who you'll see in just a moment, now at West Virginia University.  

Very quickly, I would like to thank the Hispanic Division and the Center for the Book for hosting this event.  It's just a nice thing to be able to do is come to the Library of Congress.  Also, thanks to Will, Wessie [ spelled phonetically ] and Andy for putting out the handouts on the chairs.  And we also have a nice happenstance this year, that Laura Resau, who is sitting back there, author of the honor book, What the Moon Saw, just happened to be in the area and we're very glad that she is present for the award.  I didn't know her travel schedule for when they set up the books from the bookshop to sell, so you won't see her book out there, but pay attention to it and go look for it immediately after this program.  Okay?

[ laughter ]

Yeah, and I think everybody will be open to doing some book signing.  Thank you.

Let's see.  

We're recognizing the two winners.  We have the opportunity to acknowledge Laura with the honor book.  This year we also have 15 additional titles that are recommended by the Americas Award Committee.  Again, showing so much about the breadth about the Latin American, the Caribbean and U.S. Latino and diasporic cultures.  And I hope you'll take some time.  You should have had the commended list on your seat.  But also to look we have the books at the back and take some time to look at what's there because it's a wonderful set of books to highlight.  We have everything from books that celebrate family and extended family, like My Little Car and Surprising Cecilia.  We have books that look at themes of perseverance, like Call Me Henri.  

We have books with really strong female protagonists.  El Lector, the Reader, about a girl who wants to do like her grandfather and be a lector in a cigar factory in Florida in the 1930s.  

We have books that treat the themes of prejudice and discrimination, like Letters to my Mother, by Teresa Cardenas.  Books that treat that same theme but tie it to perceptions of the natural world as a way to soothe and connect to a spiritual indigenous past, such as the book by Jorge Argueta, Talking to Mother Earth.

Books that bring to children and young adults some of the best of Latin American literature.  The biography of Nobel Laureate poet Pablo Neruda as a child, To Go Singing Through the World.

We have books that give you some of the magical realism of Latin American literature.  Napi Goes to the Mountain, just as evident in the illustration as in the text.  

Books on immigration, crossing the line, el la linea, that from the protagonist's point of view looking at the very tough decisions to make that move and try to cross the border.  Very real, very harsh.

We have books, The Honey Jar by Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu, that celebrates the oral tradition of story and myth.  And then we have books about joy.  I don't need to say anything more than the title: My Feet Are Laughing.  

So do take some time to look at those.  And now we'd like to recognize our Book Award winners, The Poet Slave of Cuba and Josias, Hold the Book.  Thank you.

[ applause ]

Charlene Barnes:
Thank you, Julie.  I got involved with the Americas Award because of a Fulbright application.  About five years ago, I was looking for multicultural books but with an international perspective for the Americas.  And I really didn't know where to go because most of the multicultural books focus on the United States, and for children and young adults.  And here I am at the university trying to teach teachers about broadening their perspectives on global ideas in connection with the Americas and the value that it has brought to the world.  

So by accident, I came across the Americas Award through a Web site.  So I'm going to encourage you to go that Web site because they have all the authors and the illustrators who had won recognition through this program.  And as a result, I got my Fulbright, went up to the Eastern Caribbean, the Caribbean.  And I'm still learning more and more about the value of authors and illustrators who bring another perspective to the Americas.  So I am so pleased to be educated again because as a teacher/educator, you know we think we have all the knowledge.  We don't [ laughs ].

To introduce you to two wonderful books for this year.  The first one is Josias, Hold the Book.  And Jennifer Elvgren and Nicole Tadgell did an excellent job because we look at the whole book.  Not just the writing and the illustrations separately.  We look at it together as the committee.  I would like to have them -- Jennifer come up first to give the award and each of the illustrators and each of the authors will be talking a little bit, so I'm going to back off [ laughs ].

Would you come on up, Jennifer?

This is the book.

[ applause ]

We have a lovely certificate and a monetary gift as a result of this award.

Jennifer Elvgren:
Thank you so much.  Thank you.

Thank you so much.  I am honored to be here.  As Mama tells Josias, "You can't eat okra with one finger." She's right.  In Haiti, which means the land of mountains, 80 percent of people are subsistence farmers.  The entire family must work together to coax small crops out of steep, eroded hillsides and mountain slopes.  The fruit of their labor is meager.  The average family earns $400 per year, leaving no money for hard goods, education or healthcare.  Disease and malnutrition run rampant.  The mortality rate is high, with life expectancy among men, 51 years, women, 54 years.  Social and political turmoil with accompanied violence is ongoing in Haiti, as is the hurricane season, which causes widespread flooding and mudslides and causes severe disforestation.  

These circumstances make Haiti the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere and one of the most disadvantaged in the world.  But many organizations worldwide have heard Haiti's cry and are bringing medicine, agricultural resources and educational opportunities to the Haitian people, who value learning and are eager to read if given that chance.

I first became interested in Haiti in 1991, through one of those very organizations, the Baptist Haiti Mission.  After watching a documentary produced by the mission, I was astounded that half of the population could not read.  I was also intrigued to discover that in households where someone became a reader, their financial situation improved over time.  

My husband and I decided to sponsor children in Haiti that very year.  Our sponsorship not only provides for those children's education and healthcare, but also for disaster relief, agricultural counseling and skilled trades training for their parents.

Over the years, we have looked forward to receiving notes and drawings from our sponsored children and newsletters from the mission.  Several years ago, one of the newsletters focused on a day in the life of a schoolchild and used the phrase, "Hold the Book," which means go to school.  That phrase captured me.  It swirled around in my head until a story began to take shape.

The first question I asked myself was, "Who wants to hold the book?" Followed by, "Why can't that person hold the book?" And finally, "What can that person do to hold the book?"

The answer to the first question had been staring at me all along.  A photo of our sponsor child, Josias, which was hanging on our refrigerator.  I knew his name was perfect for the protagonist in my story.  A picture storybook can be some tricky writing.  There is so much to accomplish in a thousand words or less.  The protagonist and the problem must be introduced.  The protagonist must work toward a solution and grow in the process.  And finally, the protagonist must discover that solution and solve the problem.  

The other answers to my questions came fairly quickly.  Because of Haiti's tired soil, I soon knew that Josias' problem would begin with a garden that wouldn't grow.  He would try extra water, then extra dung, all the while his friend, Chris Love [ spelled phonetically ], asking him to hold the book.  Josias wouldn't see the need for reading until his agriculture knowledge was exhausted.  His conclusion would be that a book holds the answers and if he were to attend school, he must give up soccer in order to have time to tend the garden as well.  As a result, his parents said they would give it a try.

When I read the book during school visits, I've been so pleased to see children in the United States connect with Josias' struggle for education.  They're surprised that not every Haitian child is able to attend school.  When I compare and contrast their day with the day of a rural Haitian schoolchild, they find it hard to believe that these children don't have playgrounds, that they eat rice and beans every day for lunch, that they have one good pair of school clothes that they have to keep nice and that the school oftentimes must share one soccer ball.  And if they don't have a soccer ball, their parents will save rags, which their wind together and form their own ball.

Many of these children have surprised me by saying they would be willing to give up things to in order to attend school, including television, Game Boys and one little girl even said she would give up horseback riding lessons.

Children are truly amazing.  I'd like to thank Julie Kline and the rest of the Americas Award Review Committee for the opportunity to further link the children of the United States with the children of Haiti.  I'm deeply grateful.

I'd like to thank former Boyds Mills Press publisher, Kent Brown and my editor at Boyds Mills Press, Larry Rosler, for their thoughtful critiques and careful editing that improved the story a thousand percent.  I'd like to take Nicole Tadgell for her exquisite illustrations, which portray emotion through facial expression so beautifully.  I'd like to thank my critique group, The Mosley Writers, and my network of writing friends.  Ann Marie Pace, Fran Slayton and Karen Rish [ spelled phonetically ] are all here today.  I'd like to thank them for their invaluable insight and availability to commiserate and celebrate the ups and downs of the writing life.

I'd like to thank my mom and dad, my husband Eric and our children for being eternal sources of encouragement, inspiration and joy.

And lastly and most importantly, I'd like to thank the children of Haiti for their irrepressible hope in the midst of seemingly impossible circumstances.  It is my prayer for them that more sponsors will arrive with books, and they will have the opportunity just like Josias to have these books weigh down their hands, to run their fingers over smooth pages and to feel their hearts pound when they study pictures of things they've never seen before.  And one day, these children will be able to decipher the words on the pages, which will expand their horizons beyond their own land of mountains.

[ applause ]

Charlene Barnes:
I'd like to thank Jennifer Elvgren, just to bring the value of education to us from another perspective.  

Nicole, we'd like to honor you next.

[ applause ]

Again, a certificate and a monetary gift.

Nicole Tadgell:
Thank you very much.  Hello.  Good morning.  I'd like to thank everyone, the Consortium of Latin American Studies, Julie Kline, all the event organizers for honoring this book and my work.  I'm very grateful and humbled by this.  I think that you might want to know a little bit about how a book is created, so that's what I'm going to chat with you about this morning.

First, I got this manuscript from Boyds Mills Press some time in 2005, and they asked if I would like to illustrate it.  And I said, "Of course!"

[ laughter ]

You know, it sounded like a very interesting story.  I had never done a story that took place in Haiti.  And I've always been a reader from a very young age.  I've always loved to read.  So I thought -- Oh, and I like to garden, too.  So I thought that would be fun.  

So I started doing research about Haiti and what it looks like there, because I needed to make it be as accurate as possible.  Accuracy is very important to me.  As some of you may know, a previous book I did, called Fatuma's New Cloth, takes place in Tanzania.  And that book was awarded the -- I'm blanking out now [ laughs ].

[ laughter ]

It was awarded an award for cultural authenticity, which greatly honored me as well.  Yes?

Male Speaker:
Children's Africana Book Award.

Nicole Tadgell:
Thank you [ laughs ].

[ laughter ]

My helpmate [ laughs ].

[ laughter ]

So of course, the first thing I do is go to the library to find books that will tell me what it looks like in Haiti.  And usually I don't go to the adult section because it's all textbooks [ laughs ].

[ laughter ]

And of course they will talk about the political history of Haiti, which was in turmoil for a very long time, and they talk about the poverty and the hardships that take place there as well.  And all these things are very important, but they don't tell me what the sky looks like in the morning,or what the leaves look like as the lights shines through them.  So what I'll do is go to the children's section and look at picture books, and history books and encyclopedias and anything I can get my hands on that takes place in Haiti.  I also found a family -- I did a school visit at a local school, and there were several children there that were from Haiti.  So I contacted the parents of one of them, who invited me over to their house.  And I showed them the manuscript and I showed them the pencil sketches that I had done.  And I have a long conversation with them about what it looked like there, in Haiti.  And they had some very good points.  

One of the difficulties was on the page where Mama's outside, cooking -- see if I can point out this page to you.  The way I had drawn it -- it's this page.  And they said that I hadn't drawn the fire correctly, the way that the stones would be arranged around the fire.  It would be a fire pit and that there wouldn't be something to hang a pot on, like in pioneer days.  They would just put the pot directly on the stones, and that was very important and very helpful.

They also loaned me a video.  It was a tourism video for Haiti, but it showed regular people walking around and what they were dressed like and what kinds of hats they would have and skirts they would have.  So I found a hat and a skirt that looked similar and my husband took pictures of me bending over the fire, so that I could get the right light and shadows going on with the images.  

Another thing I'd like to talk about is what a child's perspective would be.  I remember going through hard times as a child and I remember the difficulties that we had as a family.  But I also remember that the way children think is very different from the way adults think.  Children, I think, tend to be more positive and hopeful.  So Josias' attempts to make his garden grow symbolize that kind of resiliency in children.  So I really tried to focus on that hope from his point of view.  

I found a model for this book, which was very exciting for me.  This was the first time I used a child model and his name was Shahim [ spelled phonetically ] and he was nine years old, and he was delighted to be a model.

[ laughter ]

He loved soccer and he demonstrated his soccer skills for me so that I could draw him as his little brother in the background kicking the soccer ball around.  Umm -- let's see.

I'd like to thank -- especially my husband Mark for photographing me, for taking pictures of lots of different things that I needed, for doing extra research for things that I may have missed and for putting up with me long hours, hunched over the drafting table [ laughs ].

I'd like to thank my mom for always being there and always being supportive.  And I would also like to thank all the teachers that I've had in my life.  They encouraged me, shared art supplies with me and really inspired me to keep pursuing my dreams of being a children's book illustrator.

Thank you very much.

[ applause ]

Charlene Barnes:
Thank you so much, Nicole.

Our next book is the Poet Slave of Cuba, which is Margarita, would you come --

[ applause ]

Again, another plaque certificate and a monetary for Margarita [ laughs ].

Margarita Engle:
Thank you so much.

Thank you so much to every member of the Americas Committee and to the Consortium for Latin American Studies Programs.  Thank you to the Library of Congress for this amazing location for this [ laughs ].  Nothing could have made it more special.  And thank you to Sean Qualls for the beautiful illustrations that attract people to the book, and make them open it and keep looking.  And eventually read after looking at the pictures, then decide if they want to read it [ laughs ].

[ laughter ]

And I'm very grateful to Charlie Erickson and his son Hector for coming today.  Charlie is the Editor of Hispanic Link News Service -- the editor and founder of Hispanic Link News Service, who published my very first written words that actually made it to publication several decades ago [ laughs ].

[ laughter ]

I was writing opinion columns for Hispanic Link when I started to -- I started writing as a child.  I wrote poetry as a child.  I wrote stories as a teenager.  I wrote haiku [ laughs ]. And then I studied sciences.  I became a botanist and an agronomist and discovered a different side of myself.  Before coming back to writing, when I was in graduate school in a Ph.D. program in botany I never finished, I had a column published by Hispanic Link News Service.  Charlie Erickson here, I could say has been the most wonderful mentor to many Hispanic writers.  And basically after writing the column, I just did not go on to finish the Ph.D [ laughs ].  I switched careers and became a full-time writer.

So I just want to say want to say gracias to everybody and gracias a dios.

I feel very deep gratitude that the remarkable work of Francisco Manzano, who is known in Cuba as "Poeta Esclavo," the poet slave.  I feel very grateful that his work, and his life, especially the story of his youth, which I learned about from his own autobiographical notes, which were published by British abolitionists during the 1840s.  British abolitionists were the ones who were very active in Cuba, rather than anything from within the country.  So they took his work outside of Cuba and published it in England and translated into English.  Unfortunately, they lost the second half of his autobiography, so the part that really is well known is his youth because that's the part that survived.  And I just feel so grateful that, through this book, he can receive some of the literary attention that he deserves.  And I'd like to think that his spirit is here thanking you.

Two questions are usually asked about this book, why did I write it in verse? It's actually classified as non-fiction even though I'm imagining some of his words.  I've tried to stick very closely to the spirit of the things he wrote about himself in his autobiographical notes.  

The answer to why I wrote it in verse is -- I tried and I tried and I tried to write it in prose.  On and off for about 10 years between other projects; I'd always come back.  I can say that I was haunted by his life and by his poetry.  And I always came back to him and tried to write about him.  And I don't know what happened, if he was up there slapping me on the head or what but, [ laughs ] eventually it finally just clicked.  Well, try it in poetry, you dummy.  He was a poet.

[ laughter ]

You can't write about him in prose.  It just didn't work in prose.  It had to be in verse.  

I wrote this book hoping that the story of his life during the 1800s in Cuba would be just as relevant today in any time or place because his desire for self-expression, his desire for freedom of expression, I think, is universal.  So that even those of us who are fortunate enough to have never been in any formal slavery, I think we all know what it feels like to crave freedom of expression in one format or another.  Whether we use pictures or words or music, I think all of us have some yearning to express ourselves.  And I hope that this would appeal to modern readers and especially to modern reluctant readers, because I think the youth in the U.S. often don't realize how desperately people in other times and places have craved the ability to read and write.  And what a privilege it is to receive a free education in this country today.  I think it's something that we take for granted and that hopefully if young people realize how hard people have had to struggle to read and write in other times and places, maybe they would be a little more willing to, you know -- show up in class and want to read and write.  

I think that for teenagers, especially, poetry is a wonderful form of telling a story.  It's a way of condensing emotions that -- teenagers are just bursting with emotion.  And for that reason also, I think that worked, rather than as a prose book.  And I just feel like without reading -- I heard an illiterate woman explaining why she was in a literacy program in a library and she said that not being able to read made her feel blind.  She was an older woman and she had spent her whole life feeling blind and was finally learning how to see.  And so I really hope that aspect of his life comes through: his desire to learn to read and write and to express himself.

The other question that's always asked is how I do research, because Manzano's life is not well known in the U.S. at all.  College professors have told me, you know, that they've never heard of him.  Why haven't they heard of him? You know, why hasn't someone written about this stuff in the past.  And part of that is kind of the information gap between the U.S. and Cuba because of the long history of travel restrictions and so forth.  But even within Cuba, he is known as "el Poeta Esclavo."

There are things written about him in Spanish in Cuba but even there, he's probably not as well-known as a person with such a unique life and unique body of work.  His poems were published while he was still a slave.  That is absolutely, incredibly unique.  And he's not as well-known as he deserves.  So the answer to how I did research is I depend on people like the Library of Congress' Hispanics section.  And I have thanked them in my next book.  Because this book, which is coming out in April, The Surrender Tree, is also about a 19th Century figure, who is also not as well known as she should be.  And it's through interlibrary loan and through anonymous librarians who never see their names in print that I've been able to access this kind of information.  So thank you so much to all of you.  Really, there just aren't words to express how wonderful this event here today is.

[ applause ]

Charlene Barnes:
The illustrator of The Poet Slave of Cuba is Sean Qualls and we have a certificate and a monetary gift.  Come on up, Sean.

[ applause ]

Sean is going to talk about his book and also do a slide presentation.  So I'm just wondering who is going to control the lights for him on the presentation.

Sean Qualls:
[ inaudible ]  Good morning, everybody.  I just have to get my cheat sheet out here.  

[ laughter ]

It's really an honor to be here and I'm very touched listening to Margarita talk about the book and Juan Francisco Manzano.  She's obviously a very powerful writer, and just hearing her speak about the subject of the Poet Slave of Cuba was very emotional for me.  So I just wanted to say that and I'd like to thank the Americas Award Committee for honoring me and this book and honoring Margarita.  It's really a labor of love for myself and Margarita, also.  I'd like to thank Margarita for writing such a beautiful and inspired story.  Her words really made my job easy.  I'd also like to thank our editor at Henry Holt, Rika Salmonson [ spelled phonetically ].  Rika -- she was a great editor and she initially found my work through a directory of illustration.  And if you are not familiar with illustration directories, they're basically like a Yellow Pages of illustrators, and each illustrator has like a full-page ad and there are hundreds of pages.

So when Rika first got in contact with me, she said, "I found your work in this book and I liked your work so much that I ripped out your page and I threw away the rest of the book."

[ laughter ]


So I'd like to thank Rika one, for saving my page and not throwing it out with the rest of the book.

[ laughter ]

And two, for having the intuition that my work and Margarita's would work well together for this project.  Also, I'd like to thank my family members for coming all this way to be with me.  My sister Angela and her husband Eric.  My aunt Fey, my cousin Mel, my cousin Ronald [ spelled phonetically ] -- they all drove from New Jersey to be here, and I'm really happy that you guys were able to be here.  My cousin Brockland [ spelled phonetically ] and his son Langston.  Is it Maryland?

Male Speaker:
Yes.

Sean Qualls:
Yeah, and I haven't seen Brockland in 20 some years.

[ laughter ]

So it's really an honor to have all of you guys here and it really means a lot to me that you came out to support me.  

I'd like to thank the memory of Juan Francisco Manzano, whose life and work inspired Margarita to write such a powerful and moving story.  His words and her words really, like I said, made my job easy and they were very moving for me.  And most of all, I'd like to thank my wife, Selina, and my son, Isaiah [ spelled phonetically ].  You guys make this moment really special for me, and you both inspire me on a daily basis.  Selina, ever since we've met, you've been my biggest supporter and biggest fan and that really helps me to do my -- your encouragement helps me do my best work, so thank you.  

[ laughter ]

Okay, just to give you a bit of my history as an illustrator.  I started illustrating books about five years ago.  Before that, I was illustrating mostly for magazines and newspapers.  Before that, I'd dropped out of art school in the early '90s, and I spent like the next eight years trying to figure out everything that I'd missed in art school.  

[ laughter ]

So this whole time I was trying to figure out what exactly illustration was.  I knew what it was when I saw it, but I didn't know how to do it.  And actually when I met my wife Selina, I had been doing all this studying and I was trying to get my work out there to publishers.  And at the time, I think I was -- what I was doing -- I was doing these handmade postcards that I'd send out to various publishers.  I was probably doing about 20 at a time and sending them out.  

My wife Selina is also an illustrator and she gave me the advice.  She said, "More people just need to see your work.  You're sending out few too many postcards." So I started sending out larger number of postcards, 500, 1,000, 2,000 at a time.  And eventually, I actually started getting work after several postcards.  And that -- like I said, it was mostly work for magazines and newspapers.  Until finally, I really began to see what she was saying, versus sending out all these postcards.  So it led me to develop the philosophy if you're not getting enough work, people aren't -- enough people aren't seeing your work.  And with that philosophy, it really helped me to kind of promote my work to publishers.  I started putting my work in some of these source books, which Rika and Henry Holt saw and different online Web sites for illustrators.  Then eventually, I started getting work for children's books and picture books.

When I was initially contacted by the publisher and asked if I wanted to illustrate the story, my first impulse was to say no.  And not because I didn't like the story.  I hadn't read it -- because I was working a full-time job.  That's my son, by the way.

[ laughter ]

Yeah, because I was working a full-time job and I think I was under contract to illustrate another book.  I thought, oh my goodness, I can't illustrate two books at the same time and work a full-time job.  So our editor said, "Well, let me just send you the manuscript and let me know what you think."

So I got the manuscript and I didn't need to read the whole thing.  I just read the first verse and I was so touched by the words that I knew I couldn't say no.  So I like to read to you that verse now.

"My mind is a brush made of feathers, painting pictures of words.  I remember all that I see.  Every syllable, every word a twin of itself telling two stories at the same time.  One of sorrow, the other of hope.  

I think that's right.  It was so evocative to me that...  And the way that I work, I usually get inspiration from a feeling or a mood.  It was interesting listening to Nicole because I try to do as little research as possible.  I try -- not because I'm lazy [ laughs ].

[ laughter ]

But because it kind of interferes with my process a little bit.  I like to get in touch with my own emotions and if I can't connect through the text through my own emotions, then I usually don't want to do it.

So I usually get inspiration from a feeling and a mood and this book was so filled with feelings and evocative of moods that -- and like I said, the very first verse I was just like, "Wow!" You know, if I could write, I would have written that -- or I would have liked to have written that.

[ laughter ]

So that's what pulled me in and you know, thank God that I did it because it was really a pleasure to illustrate the book.  It was an honor learning about this man's life.  It was just fascinating and Margarita spoke about the impulse to express oneself and I could definitely connect with that.  And just with the desire to have freedom of expression was very powerful for me.  So like I said, it was a decision that I made and I've been very happy about ever since.

Okay, so I was just like to show you a few slides of my work.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get slides made of the book in time to bring, but I'll show you some of my other work and you can see some of what I talked about earlier as far as how I promoted myself and some other books I've done illustrations for.

So this is just an early image, when I was still trying to figure out what illustration was.  It was kind of very -- for me, very evocative, but it's still not quite illustration.  But I wanted to include it just to give you guys the sense of some of my earlier work.

Oops.

This image was also an earlier piece.  I did a postcard of this and this postcard really kind of brought me more work than a lot of other things -- postcards that I've done.  It's very simplistic and that's how my work tends to be.  And it kind of focuses on the face of the child.  And like I said, for me, I get my inspiration from a mood or feeling, rather than doing lots of research.  With that said, I'm at the library all the time when I have a book due.

[ laughter ]

I was just renewing some of my books online and I realized that I've renewed certain books for 35 times.  So -- [ laughs ]

[ laughter ]

But, as far as meeting people and going to their homes and things like that, I'm very impressed, Nicole.  Maybe if the situation arises in the future, maybe I'll take your lead with that.

This is a portrait I did of Lauryn Hill.  And this also brought me a bunch of work.  It lead to -- my every first book with Scholastic, which was called Powerful Words.  It's 200 profiles of -- I'm sorry.  Forty profiles of famous African-American writers and authors, and I guess she's considered a writer because of her lyrics to music.

This is part of the image that my editor initially saw that actually got me the book for Poet Slave, and it was actually a preliminary image for another book that I did, called The Baby On the Way.  But I'm glad she saw it and she saw something in it that led her to think that I could do a good job with Poet Slave.

This is the very first book I illustrated, called The Baby on the Way.  And that was the preliminary image for it before that.  It's about a little boy and his grandmother.  He wants to know if she was ever a child, and they live in the city.  She then begins to tell him how she was once the baby on the way, and she was born the 10th of 10 children.

This is the cover for Powerful Words.  The image of Lauryn Hill I showed you earlier was the image that Scholastic saw that got me this book.  

Here's the cover for Poet Slave.  I wish I could say something about it, more than what I said already but I hope the image speaks for itself.

This is another book that I illustrated called Dizzy.  It's about the life of Dizzy Gillespie.  And basically, that postcard with the yellow background and the little boy was the postcard that Scholastic saw that got me this book.  And basically how it works, because I was asked this morning by my brother-in-law, a publisher gets a manuscript from the author and then the publisher seeks out the illustrators that they think would be appropriate to illustrate that text.  So oftentimes, the illustrator and the author do not meet.  This is my first time meeting Margarita; even though we've e-mailed and so on, this is my very first time meeting her.  And these are just some interior images from the book about Dizzy.  The big cheeks.

This is actually another book that's told in poem form, and it's a book about John Coltrane, the jazz saxophonist, as a child, and this will be coming out in the spring of next year.  That's the cover image and here are a few interior images from that.  John hears his mother cranking an old phonograph, his father playing ukulele, his grandmother cooking ham bones in the kitchen.  These are all thing that perhaps inspired his music later on.  Playing clarinet in the marching band, his grandfather's sermons in church, birds chirping in the morning, sobs at funerals, jazz on the radio, Jerry's picking up a saxophone as a little boy for the first time.  

And to end with -- me and my wife were asked to collaborate on a project together.  It was going to be a picture book for children about Muhammad Ali.  Here's one of the images we did for that.  Actually, the book never came to fruition and the publisher liked the artwork, but due to some legal issues, it never happened.  And that's it for my slides.

I have one more thing that I'd like to show, but I'd like to have the lights up for that.  

Okay.  Maybe my son can keep us entertained while we're waiting.

[ laughter ]

Before John was a jazz giant -- you're welcome.

In honor of this award, I'd like to present Margarita with the artwork for the cover of Poet Slave.  I really feel like this is something that she should have and I really want her to have it, so.

[ applause ]

[ laughter ]

Margarita Engle:
Okay, now I got to have the last word here.  I will treasure this, this is special [ laughs ].

Sean Qualls:
Here's your little case for it and everything.

[ applause ]

Charlene Barnes: 
Well, you have heard of the different stages that these authors and illustrators have come to.  And we have a couple surprises through the Latin American Consortium and also Americas Award.  Julie?

Julie Kline: 
Thank you.  

Could I ask Margarita, Nicole, Jennifer and Sean to come back up front? And could you also say, are there any colors you don't like? 

[ laughter ]

Male Speaker:
[ inaudible ]


Julie Kline:
[ laughs ]  Good thing.  Come on up this way.  We started a practice -- Why don't you just stand in front of Muhammad Ali.

[ laughter ]

We started a practice a few years ago of also giving a gift symbolic of the weaving of stories through words and pictures.  These are backstrap loom weavings from Guatemala.  These were all done by a weaver in San Antonio Aguas Calientes, Nona Ramona Perez [ spelled phonetically ].  And we'd like to present one to each of you.  

[ applause ]

Nice presentation, I like that [ laughs ].

[ laughter ]

Female Speaker:
Which one?

[ laughter ]

Julie Kline:
Actually, give it to her, honey.  

[ laughter ]

Thank you.

[ applause ]

There's your photo op [ laughs ].

[ laughter ]

And while you're still all standing there, I'd like to thank everybody for coming today.  I should have done it earlier while he was still here.  I'd like to thank Paul Masache [ spelled phonetically ] of Special Events and Programs here for helping to organize the event, along with Cynthia Acosta from the Hispanic Division.

Three of our winners, Jennifer, Sean and Margarita will be in Arlington later today at 4:00 at the Arlington Public Library, with -- talk reading and then a reception and signing at Busboys and Poets bookstore across the street.  Everything -- it's lovely to have everybody together.  So many family members, cousins from 20 years ago and -- lovely of all of you for celebrating these books with these book creators.  Thank you very much and there's still food.  Thank you.

[ applause ]

Thank you.  

[ end of transcript ]
 




	

	

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