Alma Flor Ada

Alma Flor Ada and You, Volume I

Play­ing on the phrase, “the author and you”–a com­mon read­ing com­pre­hen­sion strat­egy that teaches the learner how to look at the words of an author and make infer­ences about what is being said–this series helps the teacher and teacher-librarian under­stand the under­ly­ing pur­poses of an author as they pre­pare learn­ing activ­i­ties for their stu­dents. The series focuses pri­mar­ily on books for the ele­men­tary age child (K-6), fea­tur­ing insights into the author’s back­ground, pur­poses and goals in writ­ing his books. By fur­nish­ing an overview of the author’s works, the books in the series give teach­ers the big pic­ture. Each book fea­tures per­sonal infor­ma­tion about the author, includ­ing insight into why he writes the type of books he does. In addi­tion, les­son plans and/or activ­i­ties are offered for each of the author’s books fea­tured. Lessons stress the par­tic­u­lar inter­ests of the author so the “author and you (the teacher)” can build a col­lab­o­ra­tive instruc­tional rela­tion­ship using the mate­r­ial pro­vided. Each book is writ­ten by the fea­tured author or in close col­lab­o­ra­tion with her. This sec­ond book in the series fea­tures the life and work of pro­lific author, Alma Flor Ada, dis­cussing her life and work as a bilin­gual children’s author. Because Alma Flor has com­piled such a large vol­ume of work, the series will fea­ture two vol­umes about her. The first vol­ume focuses on her life and her pic­ture books for chil­dren. Dis­cus­sion of Alma Flor’s child­hood in Cuba, her school­ing in Europe, and her immi­gra­tion to Amer­ica is inter­wo­ven with dis­cus­sions of her children’s pic­ture books. The reader thus learns the gen­e­sis for the ideas and the sto­ries. This book pro­vides a fas­ci­nat­ing win­dow into the life and­work of the beloved children’s author and her desire to help chil­dren develop the writer within. Grades K-6.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Fore­word: A Promise for a Bet­ter World by Janet Hill and Anthony L. Manna

Intro­duc­tion

PART I: My Life as an Author

An Author’s Jour­ney
On Writ­ing for Young Read­ers
The Spe­cial Process of Cre­at­ing Pic­ture Books
Coau­thor­ing Books with F. Isabel Cam­poy
When Words Sing: Suni Paz
The Read­ings that started the Journey

PART II Cre­at­ing Orig­i­nal Pic­ture Books

Let­ters and I

• The Ori­gins of the Hid­den For­est World
• About the Characters

News­pa­pers and I

• The Role of News­pa­pers in My Life

Latino Iden­tity

• In Search of a Com­mon Name
• A Dual Heritage

The Joy of Fam­ily and Traditions

• The Yearly Mir­a­cle of Christmastime
• Piñatas, Won­ders and Surprises

Respect for Farm­work­ers
Child­hood Mem­o­ries
The Rich­ness of Chidren’s Folk­lore
Diversity

• Friend­ship in Diver­sity: The Joy of Life
• Diver­sity and Freedom

The World of Nature

• Grow­ing Up in Nature
• The Won­ders of a Seed
• The Won­ders in an Egg
• No, I Don’t Like to Eat Bugs
• Birds and Helpers

The World of Fan­tasy
In Search of Iden­tity
The Promise of Transformation

PART III: Retelling Folk­tales and legends

The Rich Her­itage of Folk­tales and Leg­ends
Tra­di­tional Char­ac­ters in Con­tem­po­rary Settings

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The invi­ta­tion from Libraries Unlim­ited to write two vol­umes to share with teach­ers, par­ents and librar­i­ans the sto­ries behind my sto­ries was a rare gift. To that moment I had not gone into ana­lyz­ing why I had writ­ten each of my books. It was a beau­ti­ful moment of dis­cov­ery to find out that even the sim­plest or short­est of pic­ture books indeed con­tain an impor­tant part of my life, to delight remem­ber­ing how much my own chil­dren had been inspi­ra­tion for many of my books and to rec­og­nize how much of the val­ues and feel­ings I hold most dearly have moti­vated many of my words.

The joy of writ­ing these books is enhanced when­ever read­ers share with me that my jour­ney of dis­cov­ery has inspired them to reflect on their own journey.