It was after this assembly program in Newport, New Hampshire that I needed to make flan. I had never made flan while I was writing LUIS PAINTS THE WORLD. In the story Luis’s mom makes flan the night before his older brother is deployed with his army unit. The story is set in a READ MORE
This winter I’m mentoring a young student who is one of only 15 students selected for The Telling Room’s Young Writers and Leaders Program. These are international high school students from Somalia, Rwanda, Jordan, Iraq, Congo, Burundi, and Afghanistan and are now attending one of Portland, Maine’s high schools. They’ve all come to write a story based on READ MORE
When I was a child, I always wished my family would talk to each other the way people talked to each other in books. Or maybe I wanted my family to reveal their hearts or even know their hearts and use language as a way to speak truths to each other. Books fed this hunger for me. I don’t think it was just my family. There could be other families that build up hurts and walls and protections, but in books – novels – something cracked and people had to talk to each other or leave or die. I think now of the books that cross cultures; there would be no plot if the characters weren’t forced to engage with each other. Maybe we all need books like I did as a child, to reveal us to one another and we can feel safe – it’s just a story – but we can gain small entry to one another. And a taste of the wholeness in the world. READ MORE
My article was first opublished by The Pirate Tree: Social Justice and Children’s Literature
The group Reforma, an American Library Association affiliate, and IBBY, the International Board of Books for Young People, have, at their core, the driving belief that every child has the right to read. READ MORE