Special Collections
Multicultural Books for Children and Teens
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The Year of the Book
by Andrea ChengIn Chinese, peng you means friend. But in any language, all Anna knows for certain is that friendship is complicated.When Anna needs company, she turns to her books. Whether traveling through A Wrinkle in Time, or peering over My Side of the Mountain, books provide what real life cannot—constant companionship and insight into her changing world.Books, however, can&’t tell Anna how to find a true friend. She&’ll have to discover that on her own. In the tradition of classics like Maud Hart Lovelace&’s Betsy-Tacy books and Eleanor Estes&’ One Hundred Dresses, this novel subtly explores what it takes to make friends and what it means to be one.
¡Pío Peep! Traditional Spanish Nursery Rhymes
by Alma Flor Ada and F. Isabel Campoy and Alice SchertleSpanish oral folklore is rich in nursery rhymes and songs. Some rhymes are fragments of ancient medieval ballads; others, such as De colores, are old harvest songs. Some are frequently sung as lullabies, like Este niño lindo, others as finger plays, like Palmas palmitas. Some rhymes accompany games, such as El patio de mi casa, while others are unending rhymes that can be repeated as long as the child wants, like El barquito or La hormiguita. In most cases the rhymes and songs originated in Spain and crossed the Atlantic with the language, to delight children in all the nineteen Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America as well as the American Southwest, occasionally changing along the way. Of the ones we have collected here, three are from Mexico--La víbora de la mar, La piñata, and Tortillitas--the rest are well-known throughout the Spanish-speaking world. We have purposely selected some of the best known and most loved rhymes as an introduction to this genre. To make the selection for this book, we reviewed numerous anthologies from Spain and Latin America, among them those of Carmen Bravo Villasante, Arturo Medina, and Ana Pellegrin in Spain; Elsa Isabel Bornemann and Maria Elena Walsh in Argentina; the series Así cantan y juegan..., published by CONAFE in Mexico, and many more. Finally, faced with the decision to select among hundreds, we chose those nursery rhymes and songs that we cherished in our own childhoods, and those the numerous children--Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, and Central American--with whom we have worked love the most. En este libro la palabra se hace canto y juego para los más pequeñitos. Dirigida a niños de uno a seis años, esta maravillosa colección bilingüe de rimas tradicionales infantiles, que han sido transmitidas de generación en generación, que celebra la infancia y la herencia española y latinoamericana, será un fiel acompañante de los niños al momento de dormir o de jugar. Los versos se caracterizan por su gran ritmisidad y las adaptaciones inglesas son excelentes pues mantienen el ritmo, metro y sentido general de las originales, haciendo las rimas tan inolvidables y fácilmente memorizadas tanto en inglés como lo son en el idioma español. Esta colección, ilustrada bellamente por una artista española, está destinada a encantar a los niños y a transformarse en un clásico tanto para los más pequeños como para la familia.
I Love Saturdays y Domingos
by Alma Flor AdaA girl discuses the differences between her father's American parents and her mother's Mexican parents. Discuses de una muchacha las diferencias entre los padres americanos de su padre y los padres mexicanos de su madre.
Good Luck Cat
by Joy HarjoSome cats are good luck. You pet them and good things happen. Woogie is one of those cats. But as Woogie gets into one mishap after another, everyone starts to worry. Can a good luck cat's good luck run out?
Baseball Saved Us
by Ken MochizukiA Japanese American boy learns to play baseball when he and his family are forced to live in an internment camp during World War II, and his ability to play helps him after the war is over.