Alma Flor Ada

Alma Flor Ada on Books and Reading for Latin Baby Book Club

Last month we were for­tu­nate enough to have esteemed author, Alma Flor Ada, con­tribute a short piece on help­ing our chil­dren to grow up bilin­gually. This month, Sra. Ada has once again shared some of her thoughts on the value of books in a child’s life…

Few friends could be more valu­able for chil­dren than books.

Books can be fun and enter­tain­ing offer­ing chil­dren won­der­ful moments. But they cer­tainly do much more.

Books can be infor­ma­tive, and allow chil­dren to learn about any topic, any time, any place. But they do much more. Read more…

MuuMoo Animal Nursery Rhymes Release

It is always an immense source of joy to see a new book pub­lished. Isabel Cam­poy and I have been col­lect­ing folk­lore all our lives. We know the soul of the cul­ture lives in these pop­u­lar expres­sions that have been shared from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion through the cen­turies. It is very mean­ing­ful for us to be able to share the chil­dren folk­lore bilin­gually. Chil­dren who are famil­iar with the Span­ish lan­guage will be able to enjoy the orig­i­nal rhymes, those that are not flu­ent yet will be able to enjoy them in Eng­lish, par­tic­u­larly because the Eng­lish ver­sions have been lov­ingly and artis­ti­cally cre­ated by Rosalma Zubizarreta to make them as enjoy­able as the orig­i­nals.
These book fol­lows another col­lec­tion of tra­di­tional rhymes, Pio Peep! and one of Vil­lan­ci­cos or Christ­mas Car­ols, all of them pub­lished by Harper­Collins with extra­or­di­nary illus­tra­tions by Vivi Escriva.
A par­tic­u­lar ele­ment in MuuMoo is that our won­der­ful edi­tor Rose­mary Bros­man, under­stand­ing the impor­tance that pop­u­lar poetry remains alive, by being added upon, encour­aged us to add some of our own orig­i­nal ani­mal rhymes to the tra­di­tional col­lec­tion.
We look for­ward to your com­ments as you share MuuMoo with your chil­dren or stu­dents.
May these rhymes con­tinue to live and delight and remain as small trea­sures in the hearts of chil­dren to be held on to for­ever and some day share with yet another gen­er­a­tion of children.

Article on the application of Authors in the Classroom in the Dominican Republic in the Inter-American Journal of Education for Democracy

“Using Teach­ers’ Vol­un­teer Expe­ri­ences in the Domini­can Repub­lic to Develop Social Respon­si­bil­ity in Cana­dian Middle-School Stu­dents: An ‘Authors in the Class­room’ Approach,” Judith K. Bern­hard, Lisa Evans, Yohan­nys Mar­molejo, Teresa Cosentino
http://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/ried/

Meet the author: Alma Flor Ada interviewed for Col­orín colorado

“Alma Flor Ada is the award-winning author of more than 200 books for chil­dren. She is also a poet, sto­ry­teller, edu­ca­tor, mother, and grand­mother. With a Ph.D. in lit­er­a­ture and a life­long love for sto­ries, Ada has mas­tered the art of retelling tra­di­tional folk­tales and nurs­ery rhymes from across Latin Amer­ica. A native of Cuba who has also lived in Spain, Peru, and the United States, Alma Flor Ada writes poetry, pic­ture books, and nov­els that offer rich, mul­ti­cul­tural per­spec­tives for all children.”

View the video clips below:

Meet the Author – Col­orín col­orado
Conozca al Autor – Col­orín colorado

SILK a moving film

The won­der­ful idea, from my son Alfonso, of pro­ject­ing films at home –instead of watch­ing them on a TV screen– con­tin­ues to my the life long dream of a home the­ater be a great gift.
Among the many beau­ti­ful films recently seen is SILK — a film with a very direct story line, a love story, but one of the most del­i­cate expres­sions of true love.
The views of France and Japan are equally strik­ing, the pho­tog­ra­phy is excel­lent, but it is the del­i­cacy and exquis­ite­ness of the love story what makes it memorable.

Naomi Shihab Nye beautiful message

The Read­ing the World Con­fer­ence at the Uni­ver­sity of San Fran­cisco this past week­end was as always an extra­or­di­nary expe­ri­ence.
While I enjoyed every speaker, I would like to com­ment on a moment that was very sig­nif­i­cantly to me per­son­ally.
The great poet Naomi Shi­hab Nye as usual did not read a speak, but wove her talk around sto­ries and poems, by her and other poets. Every word was mean­ing­ful, but what I want to share with you is a par­tic­u­lar story.
Naomi told how when as a young woman she moved to San Anto­nio and was get­ting to know the city she was intrigued by a news­pa­per arti­cle which men­tioned that a par­tic­u­lar fam­ily had donated their man­sion, filled with art, to become a museum.
She invited a friend to go visit the museum, and was delighted when upon arriv­ing to the street she rec­og­nized the house she had seen in the news­pa­per. So, she parked the car in their park­ing lot, entered the house and began admir­ing each paint­ing. The friend decided to go upstairs while Naomi enjoyed the liv­ing room, think­ing of how pleas­ant it was to see these paint­ings in situ, with­out even a label inter­rupt­ing the decor.
After a moment there was a gen­tle­man next to her ask­ing her what was she doing. She was sur­prised by the ques­tion and said she was enjoy­ing the museum. The gen­tle­man pointed out to her that the museum was two blocks down the street. So, when she asked what then was this place, he answered with a smile: We thought it was our home.
She called her friend from upstairs, and left filled with embar­rass­ment, while a num­ber of peo­ple sit­ting in the par­lor looked at them.
She never told any­one of such blun­der.
Years later, after a poetry read­ing a young woman approached her and asked her if indeed she was the per­son who once had entered a pri­vate home think­ing it was a museum. All her feel­ings of inad­e­quacy returned, but then the woman sur­prised her by say­ing: “I have wanted to thank you all my life. I was the teenager on that par­lor. And up to then I had never appre­ci­ated the place I lived in, but when you mis­took it by a museum, I real­ized that my par­ents indeed had good taste and hand made an effort to cre­ate this beau­ti­ful home, and my rela­tion­ship towards them changed… because of you.
Naomi’s mes­sage with this story was how extra­or­di­nary it is that life will give us the oppor­tu­nity to free our­selves of some­thing from the past that had both­ered us.
For me the mes­sage took even a higher mean­ing. It made me think again of the movie Atone­ment that I men­tioned on an ear­lier post­ing. And I felt the invi­ta­tion to not wait for life to come with a mag­i­cal gift but to begin to cre­ate the actions that could some­how con­tribute to make up for past errors.
All my best wishes to any­one who reads this.