☕ CUPPA OF CHOICE: Café con leche (coffee with milk), made with a mixture of Cuban espresso (Café La Llave brand) and Italian roast (Starbucks brand). I love REALLY strong coffee, but I only drink it in the morning, so it doesn’t keep me awake at night. Maybe that’s why I do most of my writing early, before my brain runs out of caffeine.
* Cultural Note: many Latino children are introduced to café con leche at the age of two, so why aren’t there any children’s books about coffee? If I thought I could get it published, I would write one! My Abuelita (grandma) used to scold me for not serving my son coffee when he was little. She said, “¡Es un hombrecito, necesita su café!” (He’s a little man, he needs his coffee!)
☕ HOT OFF THE PRESSES: Enchanted Air: Two Cultures, Two Wings: A Memoir (Atheneum, 2015); Drum Dream Girl: How One Girl’s Courage Changed Music, illustrated by Rafael Lopez (HMH, 2015); The Sky Painter: Louis Fuertes, Bird Artist, illustrated by Aliona Bereghici (Two Lions, 2015); Orangutanka: A Story in Poems, illustrated by Renee Kurilla (Henry Holt, 2015). Forthcoming: Lion Island: Cuba’s Warrior of Words (Atheneum, August 2016) — a verse novel about the nonviolent freedom struggle of indentured Chinese laborers; and Morning Star Horse/El Caballo Lucero (HBE Publishers, Autumn 2016) — a middle grade historical fantasy about Cuban children at San Diego’s Raja Yoga Academy.
☕ FAVE FOODIE CHILDREN’S BOOKS: Three Golden Oranges by Alma Flor Ada, illustrated by Reg Cartwright (Atheneum, 2012); Apple Pie 4th of July by Janet Wong, illustrated by Margaret Chodos-Irvine (Harcourt, 2012); Alice Waters and the Trip to Delicious by Jacqueline Briggs Martin, illustrated by Hayelin Choi (Readers to Eaters, 2014).
☕ Visit Margarita Engle’s Official Website
☕☕ JUST ONE MORE SIP: Short poems related to the [above] photograph of myself drinking café con leche beside my father’s painting of my mother picking pomegranates. She was wearing sandals, but he left them out, and I have chosen to speculate about the reason.
Coffee Tanka
each hot sip
of café con leche
carries me
traveling back to childhood
watching as grownups savor time
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Pomegranate Tanka
my father
paints her harvesting pomegranates—
barefoot
the reality of shoes
too modern for this lush garden
~ Copyright © 2016 Margarita Engle. All rights reserved.
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☕☕☕ CAN’T GET ENOUGH: Enjoy this book trailer for The Sky Painter!
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☕☕☕☕ STILL THIRSTY: Speaking of Margarita’s parents, she explains the romantic story of how they met in the first of this series of videos:
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Copyright © 2016 Jama Rattigan of Jama’s Alphabet Soup. All rights reserved.
Thanks for sharing Margarita with us today, Jama! We’re loving Enchanted Air in my classroom these days.
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That book is simply sublime.
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Oh, so great. Poetry and coffee and art. Don’t need much more.
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Hope your Thursday has been a good one!
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Wonderful to see Margarita here. I loved listening to the story of how her parents met. Lovely! And caffeinated toddlers? Yikes!
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I loved that story too — seems so fairytale like, doesn’t it?
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Wonderful to see Margarita visiting today, Jama. Looking forward to Lion Island! Love the painting and the poem.
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I’m so glad Margarita posed with and shared the story behind her father’s lovely painting.
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Love Margarita’s work!! Thanks for sharing, Jama 🙂
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We all love her work. She’s amazing!
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Margarita’s work is incredible – and my 2-year-old is already in love with Drum Dream Girl! Thanks for spotlighting her, Jama.
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Your daughter has good taste in books — takes after her Dad :).
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I agree with our talented hotTEA; the very best coffee in the world is Cuban cafe con leche from Miami – I suspect it’d be even more amazing in Cuba itself. And I don’t like coffee, so that’s saying something! Indeed, one does “savor time” when one drinks that. Yum.
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Now I’m curious to taste cafe con leche (not being a coffee drinker either but it does sound wonderful).
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I love Enchanted Air. Margarita is wonderful!
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