Pura Belpre Award WinnerA tender, transcendent, and meticulously crafted novel from Newbery Honoree, Pam Munoz Ryan, and three-time Caldecott Honoree, Peter Sis!From the time he is a young boy, Neftali hears the call of a mysterious voice. Even when the neighborhood children taunt him, and when his harsh, authoritarian father ridicules him, and when he doubts himself, Neftali knows he cannot ignore the call. He listens and follows as it leads him under the canopy of the lush rain forest, into the fearsome sea, and through the persistent Chilean rain on an inspiring voyage of self-discovery that will transform his life and, ultimately, the world.Combining elements of magical realism with biography, poetry, literary fiction, and transporting illustrations, Pam Munoz Ryan and Peter Sis take readers on a rare journey of the heart and imagination as they explore the inspiring early life of the poet who became Pablo Neruda.

The Dreamer

A fictionalized biography of the Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, who grew up a painfully shy child, ridiculed by his overbearing father, but who became one of the most widely-read poets in the world

First awarded in 1993, the Américas Award is given in recognition of books that authentically and engagingly portray Latino/as in Latin America, the Caribbean or the United States. By combining both and linking the Americas, the award reaches beyond geographic borders, as well as multicultural-international boundaries, focusing instead upon cultural heritages within the hemisphere. The Award is unique in that selects Latino/a youth literature for classroom use and in that it focuses on the entire Western Hemisphere. Scholars from the fields of literature, education, lbrary science, and theater engage with Latino/a Critical Race Theory (LatCrit) in this ecollection of essays about the Américas Award, the Award-winning and honored books, and the contexts in which the books are used. This collection offers essays on the history of the award, close readings of Award-winning and honored books situated in the classroom, and discussions of how best to use the books in the classroom, library and theater.

The Américas Award

Reading the World’s Stories is volume 5 in the Bridges to Understanding series of annotated international youth literature bibliographies sponsored by the United States Board on Books for Young People. USBBY is the United States chapter of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY), a Switzerland-based nonprofit whose mission is bring books and children together. The series promotes sharing international children’s books as a way to facilitate intercultural understanding and meet new literary voices. This volume follows Children’s Books from Other Countries (1998), The World though Children’s Books (2002), Crossing Boundaries with Children’s Books (2006), and Bridges to Understanding: Envisioning the World through Children’s Books (2011) and acts as a companion book to the earlier titles. Centered around the theme of the importance of stories, the guide is a resource for discovering more recent global books that fit many reading tastes and educational needs for readers aged 0-18 years. Essays by storyteller Anne Pellowski, author Beverley Naidoo, and academic Marianne Martens offer a variety of perspectives on international youth literature. This latest installment in the series covers books published from 2010-2014 and includes English-language imports as well as translations of children’s and young adult literature first published outside of the United States. These books are supplemented by a smaller number of culturally appropriate books from the US to help fill in gaps from underrepresented countries. The organization of the guide is geographic by region and country. All of the more than 800 entries are recommended, and many of the books have won awards or achieved other recognition in their home countries. Forty children’s book experts wrote the annotations. The entries are indexed by author, translator, illustrator, title, and subject. Back matter also includes international book awards, important organizations and research collections, and a selected directory of publishers known for publishing books from other countries.

Reading the World's Stories