Américas Award

It's nearly Christmas in California. María and her little brother, Juan, are headed south to the border with Mexico to visit their grandmother. They are excited to celebrate Las Posadas with her, honoring Mary and Joseph's journey to the inn at Bethlehem. María has knitted Abuela a scarf, and Juan has drawn her a picture. But when Juan's gift won't fit through the tiny spaces in the border fence - barely big enough for little fingers to touch - María launches a cunning plan, using creativity and hope. Mitali Perkins's debut picture book offers the best kind of Christmas story - one of love, family, travel, and miracles - with simple language and abundant feeling, Pura Belpré Honor illustrator Sara Palacios illuminates the heart of this story with her sun-soaked vistas and warm, smiling faces of excited families. Here is the perfect tribute to how little gifts of love can span great distances.

Eleven-year-old (nearly twelve) Celi Rivera, who is a mix of Black-Puerto Rican-Mexican Indian is uncomfortable about her approaching period, and the changes that are happening to her body; she is horrified that her mother wants to hold a traditional public moon ceremony to celebrate the occasion--until she finds out that her best friend Magda is contemplating an even more profound change of life.

In Bogotá, Columbia, young José eagerly anticipates Saturday, when he can visit the library started by José Alberto Gutiérrez, a garbage collector, and take a book home to enjoy all week. Includes note about Gutiérrez's life and Bogotá.

In Bogotá, Colombia, young José eagerly anticipates Saturday, when he can visit the library started by José Alberto Gutiérrez, a garbage collector, and take a book home to enjoy all week. Includes note about Gutiérrez's life and Bogotá.

Nine-year-old Betita and her parents fled Mexico after her uncle was killed by the cartels, and settled in Los Angeles seeking political asylum and safety in what her father calls Aztlan, the land of the cranes; but now they have been swept up by the government's Immigration Customs Enforcement, her father deported back to Mexico, and Betita and her mother confined in a family detention camp--Betita finds heart in her imagination and the picture poems her father taught her, but each day threatens to further tear her family apart.

Illustrations and easy-to-read text portray the Dominican Republic in all of its hues, from the cinnamon in cocoa to the blue black seen only in dreams.

A fictionalized account of a Nahua woman who grew up in Mexico during the early 1900s, became a model for artists, worked with scholars to preserve Nahuatl language and stories, and was known as the "soul of Mexico.

Based on a true story, the tale of one girl's perilous journey to cross the U.S. border and lead her family to safety during the Mexican Revolution.

A girl named Petra Pena, who wanted nothing more than to be a storyteller, like her abuelita. But Petra's world is ending. Earth has been destroyed by a comet, and only a few hundred scientists and their children - among them Petra and her family - have been chosen to journey to a new planet. They are the ones who must carry on the human race. Hundreds of years later, Petra wakes to this new planet - and the discovery that she is the only person who remembers Earth. A sinister Collective has taken over the ship during its journey, bent on erasing the sins of humanity's past. They have systematically purged the memories of all aboard - or purged them altogether. Petra alone now carries the stories of our past, and with them, any hope for our future. Can she make them live again?

After his family hires migrant Mexican workers to help save their Vermont farm from foreclosure, eleven-year-old Tyler befriends the oldest daughter, but when he discovers they may not be in the country legally, he realizes that real friendship knows no borders.

A celebration of the paleta, an icy fruit popsicle. In English and Spanish.

Born in Puerto Rico, Roberto Clemente was the first Latin American player inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Known not only for his exceptional baseball skills but also for his extensive charity work in Latin America, Clemente was well loved during his eighteen years of playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates. He died in a plane crash while bringing relief supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua, but his legacy and inspiration live on.

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

The story of the first pirates of the Caribbean, told in verse.

Once there was a little boy named Neftalí who loved wild things wildly and quiet things quietly. From the moment he could talk, he surrounded himself with words. Neftalí discovered the magic between the pages of books. When he was sixteen, he began publishing his poems as Pablo Neruda. Pablo wrote poems about the things he loved―things made by his friends in the café, things found at the marketplace, and things he saw in nature. He wrote about the people of Chile and their stories of struggle. Because above all things and above all words, Pablo Neruda loved people.

In 1969 Spanish Harlem, Evelyn tries to break free from her conservative Puerto Rican environment, but her activist grandmother & neighborhood protests complicate things.

A combined history of the Puerto Rican parrot and the island of Puerto Rico, highlighting current efforts to save the Puerto Rican parrot by protecting and managing this endangered species.

Years before the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling Brown v. Board of Education, Sylvia Mendez, an eight-year-old girl of Mexican and Puerto Rican heritage, played an instrumental role in Mendez v. Westminster, the landmark desegregation case of 1946 in California.

Lost in the Black Forest, Otto meets three mysterious sisters and finds himself entwined in a prophecy, a promise, and a harmonica--and decades later three children, Friedrich in Germany, Mike in Pennsylvania, and Ivy in California find themselves caught up in the same thread of destiny in the darkest days of the twentieth century, struggling to keep their families intact, and tied together by the music of the same harmonica.

Loosely based on a school explosion that took place in New London, Texas in 1937, this is the story of two teenagers: Naomi, who is Mexican, and Wash, who is black, and their dealings with race, segregation, love, and the forces that destroy people.

A boy helps his father keep their very old car running as they make a trip to Havana for his newborn cousin's zero-year birthday. Includes author's note about cars in Cuba.

When her parents make the dangerous and illegal trek across the Mexican border in pursuit of the American dream, Reyna and her siblings are forced to live with their stern grandmother as they wait for their parents to build the foundation of a new life. But when things don't go quite as planned, Reyna finds herself preparing for her own journey to "El Otro Lado" to live with the man who has haunted her imagination for years: her long-absent father.

Before Pedro Martínez pitched the Red Sox to a World Series championship, before he was named to the All-Star team eight times, before he won the Cy Young Award three times, he was a kid from a place called Manoguayabo in the Dominican Republic. Pedro loved baseball more than anything, and his older brother Ramón was the best pitcher he'd ever seen. He dreamed of the day he and his brother could play together in the major leagues. This is the story of how that dream came true.

Twelve-year-old Jaime makes the treacherous journey from his home in Guatemala to his older brother in New Mexico after his cousin is murdered by a drug cartel.

The extraordinary true tale of the Recycled Orchestra of Paraguay, an orchestra made up of children playing instruments built from recycled trash.

In this stunning debut novel, Pushcart-nominated author Ibi Zoboi draws on her own experience as a young Haitian immigrant, infusing this lyrical exploration of America with magical realism and vodou culture. On the corner of American Street and Joy Road, Fabiola Toussaint thought she would finally find une belle vie—a good life. But after they leave Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Fabiola’s mother is detained by U.S. immigration, leaving Fabiola to navigate her loud American cousins, Chantal, Donna, and Princess; the grittiness of Detroit’s west side; a new school; and a surprising romance, all on her own. Just as she finds her footing in this strange new world, a dangerous proposition presents itself, and Fabiola soon realizes that freedom comes at a cost. Trapped at the crossroads of an impossible choice, will she pay the price for the American dream?

Award-winning author and illustrator Duncan Tonatiuh tells the story of Amalia Hernandez, dancer and founder of El Ballet Folklorico de Mexico. Published in time for the 100th anniversary of Hernandez's birth, Danza! is the first picture book about the famous dancer and choreographer. Danza! is a celebration of Hernandez's life and of the rich history of dance in Mexico. As a child, Amalia always thought she would grow up to be a teacher, until she saw a performance of dancers in her town square. She was fascinated by the way the dancers twirled and swayed, and she knew that someday she would be a dancer, too. She began to study many different types of dance, including ballet and modern, under some of the best teachers in the world. Hernandez traveled throughout Mexico studying and learning regional dances. Soon she founded her own dance company, El Ballet Folklorico de Mexico, where she integrated her knowledge of ballet and modern dance with folkloric dances. The group began to perform all over the country and soon all over the world, becoming an international sensation that still tours today.

Lola was just a baby when her family left the Island, so when she has to draw it for a school assignment, she asks her family, friends, and neighbors about their memories of her homeland ... and in the process, comes up with a new way of understanding her own heritage.

Undocumented is the story of immigrant workers who have come to the United States without papers. Every day, these men and women join the work force and contribute positively to society. The story is told via the ancient Mixtec codex{u2014}accordion fold{u2014}format. Juan grew up in Mexico working in the fields to help provide for his family. Struggling for money, Juan crosses over into the United States and becomes an undocumented worker, living in a poor neighborhood, working hard to survive. Though he is able to get a job as a busboy at a restaurant, he is severely undercompensated{u2014}he receives less than half of the minimum wage! Risking his boss reporting him to the authorities for not having proper resident papers, Juan risks everything and stands up for himself and the rest of the community.

Life is difficult for Ana Rosa, a twelve-year-old would-bewriter living in a small village in the Dominican Republic.

When a government official comes into a third grade classroom and tells the students to write a composition entitled "What My Family Does at Night," Pedro must decide how he feels about the military dictatorship that is running his country.

Poems in Spanish and English describe the author's boyhood as a refugee from rural El Salvador living in San Francisco's Mission District, where he had to cope with a new language, a new culture, and a very different way of life.

Having come from Mexico to California ten years ago, fourteen-year-old Francisco is still working in the fields but fighting to improve his life and complete his education.

In the early 1960s in the Dominican Republic, twelve-year-old Anita learns that her family is involved in the underground movement to end the bloody rule of the dictator, General Trujillo.

In this version of a traditional tale, Senor Calavera arrives at Grandma Beetle's door, ready to take her to the next life, but after helping her count, in English and Spanish, as she makes her birthday preparations, he changes his mind.

La nina seria, the serious child. That's how Consuelo's mother has cast her pensive, book-loving daughter, while Consuelo's younger sister, Mili, is seen as vivacious, a ray of tropical sunshine. Two daughters: one dark, one light; one to offer comfort and consolation, the other to charm and delight. But something is not right in this Puerto Rican family. Coming of age when American influence threatens to dilute the island's traditional Spanish customs as well as to harm, perhaps irreparably, its fragile ecology, Consuelo watches her family and culture being torn asunder, much like the island itself.

A biography of Celia Cruz, the Cuban-born Queen of Salsa. In English and Spanish.

Each day Chrislove asks his friend Josias when he will "hold the book," or join them at school, but Josias can only think of tending the bean garden so that his family will have enough food.

Juan Francisco Manzano spent his early years entertaining the friends of his owner's wife. His poetry was his outlet. Written in verse.

A celebration of the paleta, an icy fruit popsicle. In English and Spanish.

From blueberries to vanilla, indigenous foods of the Americas are celebrated in this collection of haiku.

As Senor Calavera prepares for Grandma Beetle's birthday he finds an alphabetical assortment of unusual presents. Includes Spanish words.

Cuba has fought three wars for independence, and still she is not free. This history in verse creates a lyrical portrait of Cuba.

Lomas Garza's vibrant paintings and warm personal stories depict memories of growing up in the traditional Mexican-American community of her hometown of Kingsville, Texas.

Manny relates his coming of age experiences as a member of a poor Mexican American family in which the alcoholic father only adds to everyone's struggle.

A collection of stories about life in a migrant farm family.

A little girl describes what a day is like in her parents' Chinese store in Guatemala City.