another surprise book giveaway!

April 17, 2019 ~ jama ~ 12 Comments

Never a dull moment around here.

Right after I announced last week’s NPM surprise book giveaway (There Was an Old Gator Who Swallowed a Moth by B.J. Lee and David Opie), we were inundated with HARD STARES.

Ahem, ahem.

Firmly but ever so politely, the resident Paddingtons declared:

WE WILL NOT BE OUTDONE.

If Mr Cornelius and Blue Bear were doing a giveaway, so would they.

And so, 70-something Paddingtons are giving away a brand new copy of Soaring Earth: A Companion Memoir to Enchanted Air by Margarita Engle, our current Young People’s Poet Laureate:

In this powerful companion to her award-winning memoir Enchanted Air, Young People’s Poet Laureate Margarita Engle recounts her teenage years during the turbulent 1960s.

Margarita Engle’s childhood straddled two worlds: the lush, welcoming island of Cuba and the lonely, dream-soaked reality of Los Angeles. But the revolution has transformed Cuba into a mystery of impossibility, no longer reachable in real life. Margarita longs to travel the world, yet before she can become independent, she’ll have to start high school.

Then the shock waves of war reach America, rippling Margarita’s plans in their wake. Cast into uncertainty, she must grapple with the philosophies of peace, civil rights, freedom of expression, and environmental protection. Despite overwhelming circumstances, she finds solace and empowerment through her education. Amid the challenges of adolescence and a world steeped in conflict, Margarita finds hope beyond the struggle, and love in the most unexpected of places.

Just released in February 2019, Soaring Earth has received **starred reviews** from Horn Book, School Library Journal and Shelf Awareness. Margarita is a master of the verse memoir and this is a beautifully crafted, powerful book!

For a chance to win, please leave a comment at this post no later than midnight (EDT) Wednesday, April 24, 2019. You may also enter by sending an email with MARGARITA in the subject line to: readermail (at) jamakimrattigan (dot) com. Giveaway open to U.S. residents only, please. Good Luck!!

hotTEAs of Children’s Poetry: Margarita Engle

April 14, 2016September 25, 2017 ~ jama ~ 15 Comments

Margarita Engle is the Cuban-American author of the Newbery Honor verse novel, The Surrender Tree, Pura Belpré Award-winning verse memoir, Enchanted Air, and Charlotte Zolotow Award winning picture book, Drum Dream Girl. Other honors include multiple Pura Belpré Medals, Américas Awards, PEN USA Award, Jane Addams Award, Claudia Lewis Poetry Award, Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award Honor, and International Reading Association Award.

☕ 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

Pomegranate Tanka

my father
paints her harvesting pomegranates—
barefoot
the reality of shoes
too modern for this lush garden

☕☕☕ CAN’T GET ENOUGH: Enjoy this book trailer for The Sky Painter!

☕☕☕☕ 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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margarita engle’s sweet scent hunger

April 19, 2012September 8, 2017 ~ jama ~ 32 Comments

#15 in the Poetry Potluck Series, celebrating National Poetry Month 2012.

“In Latin America in general, and Cuba in particular, poets have been the inspiration behind struggles for independence, struggles for freedom of all sorts.” ~ Margarita Engle (PW Interview, 2009)

I think most of us will agree that for some things, only poetry will do.

Verse can capture the full range of human emotion in its purest form, distilling its essence for all time. This is what award-winning author Margarita Engle does so brilliantly in her historical novels-in-verse, which I love for their cultural richness, soaring lyricism and enduring power. Each of her books is a work of incomparable beauty, a crystallized portrait of unvarnished truth and harsh realities culled from a complex situation enmeshed in the broader canvas of Cuban history.

With just a few strokes, Margarita is able to break your heart at the turmoil and horrors of war and revolution, the social injustices endured by oppressed women, the unspeakable atrocities of slavery. History is personalized, anguish is personified, with her focus on strong role models, individuals in terrible circumstances who have overcome unimaginable obstacles.

So, we are uplifted and inspired by wilderness nurse Rosa la Bayamesa, who chose to respond with kindness and compassion while her country was being torn apart by successive wars, or by poet slave Juan Francisco Manzano, whose courageous actions and fortitude prove that the heart and imagination can never be suppressed. Ultimately, our faith is restored in the untold resilience and shining beauty of the human spirit. The voices in her poems blend to make unforgettable music — a clear, unfettered song of hope and freedom triumphing over adversity.