When was margarita engle born

August October February Margarita Engle. November 9 Virtual Florida Literacy Association. December Virtual Latinx Kidlit Festival. Light for All is a lyrical and unifying picture book that celebrates the immigrant experience in America.

The most daring abolitionists were poets who veiled their work in metaphor. In passionate, accessible verses of her own, Engle evokes the voice of this book-loving feminist and abolitionist who bravely resisted an arranged marriage at the age of fourteen, and was ultimately courageous enough to fight against injustice.

Historical notes, excerpts, and source notes round out this exceptional tribute. When Fredrika Bremer asked the Swedish Consulate to find her a quiet home in the Cuban countryside, she expected a rustic thatched hut, not this luxurious mansion in Matanzas, where Elena, the daughter of the house, can barely step foot outside.

The freedom to roam is something that women and girls in Cuba do not have. Yet when Fredrika sets off to learn about the people of this magical island, she is accompanied by Cecilia, a young slave who longs for her lost home in Africa. Soon Elena sneaks out of the house to join them. As the three women explore the lush countryside, they form a bond that breaks the barriers of language and culture. The Firefly Letters is a story about a little-known early feminist.

Another fine volume by a master of the novel in verse. The easily digestible, poetic narrative makes this a perfect choice for reluctant readers, students of the women's movement, those interested in Cuba, and teens with biography assignments. This uncommon story will resonate. A lyrical biography of a Cuban slave who escaped to become a celebrated poet. Born into the household of a wealthy slave owner in Cuba in , Juan Francisco Manzano spent his early years by the side of a woman who made him call her Mama, even though he had a mama of his own.

Denied an education, young Juan still showed an exceptional talent for poetry. His verses reflect the beauty of his world, but they also expose its hideous cruelty. Powerful, haunting poems and breathtaking illustrations create a portrait of a life in which even the pain of slavery could not extinguish the capacity for hope. Latino Interest. It was a miracle, this path of water where a mountain had stood—and creating a miracle is no easy thing.

Thousands lost their lives, and those who survived worked under the harshest conditions for only a few silver coins a day. From the young "silver people" whose back-breaking labor built the Canal to the denizens of the endangered rainforest itself, this is the story of one of the largest and most difficult engineering projects ever undertaken, as only Newbery Honor-winning author Margarita Engle could tell it. Here in this tropical sanctuary, so far away from Germany, will he be safe from Nazi influence?

But that golden land called New York has turned away his ship full of refugees, and Daniel finds himself in Cuba instead. As the tropical island begins to work its magic on him, the young refugee befriends a local girl with some painful secrets of her own. Yet even in Cuba, the Nazi darkness is never far away. While Daniel is a fictional character, Tropical Secrets is based on real events in history.

This book is perfect for young adults who are interested in reading stories about refugees, immigrants, and the pernicious reach of fascist influence during World War II. The book will provide great fodder for discussion of the Holocaust, self-reliance, ethnic and religious bias, and more.

Reluctant readers will be encouraged by the open layout and brief text, and everyone will be captivated by the eloquent poems and compelling characters. Louis loves to watch birds. He takes care of injured birds and studies how they look and how they move. His father wants him to become an engineer, but Louis dreams of being a bird artist. To achieve this dream, he must practice, practice, practice.

He learns from the art of John James Audubon. But as Louis grows up, he begins to draw and paint living, flying birds in their natural habitats. Louis Agassiz Fuertes — is now known as the father of modern bird art. He traveled with many scientific expeditions all over the world. His best-known works—paintings for habitat exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History in New York—are still beloved by visitors today.

His art helped to encourage wildlife conservation, inspiring people to celebrate and protect the world of wings. Poems by Newbery Honor—winning author Margarita Engle and illustrations by Aliona Bereghici capture the life of Louis Fuertes and the deep sense of wonder that he felt when he painted the sky. When you wander down a leafy path I can smell your invisible trail. This cozy story gently teaches children what to do if they lose their way, and reassures them that a search-and-rescue dog can find them wherever they are.

And once a child is found, the dog will bring people to make sure that everyone gets home safe and sound. I think that for a writer, being understood is the most important result of what you do. It's your goal. It's really your goal is communicating. So it was important to me that people, for instance, were able to read the "The Post-Slave Of Cuba" and see that I wasn't just trying to glorify the violence of slavery. That I was trying to write about him with empathy.

And yet, not avoid the fact that there was violence. Not try to sugar coat that and pretend that it didn't exist. And then in The Surrender Tree , I wrote about thirty years of war, without intending for it to be just understood as a book about war, but as a book about peace. By showing what thirty years of war were like, showing the need for peace. So it really meant a lot to me that those books were read and understood the way I had intended them. I learned about Juan Francisco Manzano accidentally while reading a book about the architecture of Cuba.

And there was a brief excerpt of one of his poems, along with some photographs of buildings. And I thought, "Who is this? It says he wrote while he was still a slave. I thought, "How amazing. Why haven't I heard of him before? Why don't I know about him? Why don't other people know about him? His autobiographical notes about his childhood in particular had not yet been reprinted at that time. So they were very obscure and hard to find. But I did manage to get them.

Now they've been reprinted in a modern version by a university press. He wrote notes about his life that were used by British abolishionists to try to promote freedom for slaves in Cuba and into the slave trade in Caribbean. And those biographical notes are really what inspired me. What he wrote about his own life is what inspired me. What amazed me in reading Juan Francisco Manzano's autobiographical notes and the poems about his own life, what really intrigued me and moved me, was that he was able to put his emotions into this beautiful vehicle of poetry, this beautiful vessel, that contained these unimaginable emotions, such an overwhelming suffering and so much cruelty that he experienced.

And yet, he was able to turn it into something beautiful. When you visit Cuba, even today, and certainly when I was a child and absolutely in earlier centuries, sugar was what life was about in Cuba. Sugar was the only crop, the only commercial crop, on a large scale for centuries. And it's one of the most brutally demanding crops for harvest. The physical labor must feel like slavery to those who have to do it, harvest by hand.

Even now that there's not officially slavery. It's just an extremely, excruciating crop to harvest by hand. The leaves are as sharp as knives. When you're in a sugarcane field, it towers over you. It's hot. They chop with a machete. It's a demanding crop. And yet, it sounds so sweet. When you say the word sugar, you think of good things. I think in a lot of my writing, and maybe it's a characteristic of poetry itself, is that it is natural to just kind of accept that there is a blend of sweet and bitter in life.

My first young adult novel and verse was the The Poet Slave of Cuba. Then while researching 19th century Cuba for that book, I became intrigued by Rosa Rosa la Bayamesa , who was born a slave, but was set free in when Cuban planters declared independence from Spain. It was as if you combined the American Revolution and the Civil War in the same era. Because those things were simultaneous in Cuba.

The struggle for freedom from slavery and independence from Spain happened at the same time. And I was fascinated by her because she was set free. She was very young. And instead of going off to enjoy her freedom, she chose to be a nurse in the wilderness, hiding in caves and hiding in jungles.

And she chose to heal the wounds and illnesses of soldiers from both sides in those wars. It turned out to be thirty years of war, ending with what we what we know in the U. And in Spain would be called the disaster. Because it really But I was just so inspired by her courage and her compassion in the choices that she made.

And she's another excellent example of what I was talking about, that the people I'm interested in writing about are the ones who make hopeful choices in situations that seem hopeless.

Rosa la Bayamesa hid in jungles and in caves while serving as a wilderness nurse during those three wars for independence from Spain. And she used wild plants to heal because she didn't have anything else. She didn't have manufactured medicine. So she experimented and she made do with what she had.

And she used all sorts of herbs and roots and berries and leaves. And so, just that topic fits so well with my own background in botany. Actually, in the poet slave of Cuba, there was a bit of botany also. Because when Juan Francisco Manzano was teaching himself to read and write as a young child, he was forbidden to read and write. So he would do it in secret. And he would carve letters that he had seen other people write and try and do it himself.

And he would cave them into a leaf with his fingernail. And for me, that and also Rosa la Bayamesa 's work, was so visual. And I felt like I could see those leaves.

And I could smell the herbs. For me, it just really brought those stories to life, to imagine the tropical nature that was daily surrounding daily life for these people.

When I was researching The Surrender Tree and when I was writing about those wars for independence from Spain, I was actually tremendously shocked to learn that Cuba was the first place where there were formal concentration camps. And from that time on, once it was done in Cuba, it seemed like one country after another, one war after another, all over the world started to use this method of brutally herding hundreds of thousands of peasants into fenced, guarded enclosures, and leaving them there with no sanitation, food or medicine.

Just basically herding them into concentration camps and leaving them to die. At that time, they were called re-concentration camps. And it was an idea that one of the Spanish generals had. And I think it's amazing that it's not better known. I think it's really shocking that it's not better known. This history for me was also personal. Because I had heard all my life that my great grandmother, or my great grandparents, both of them, and their youngest child at the time, had to go to another place.

They were on a farm. And they had to go to another place during the final war for independence from Spain. And I didn't know what had to go to another place meant until I started reading about those re-concentration camps. Tropical Secrets is a book that I wrote because for me, it's a story about safe harbors and the kindness of strangers.

And I hope that I would have written it, even if I didn't have any personal connection to the story. As it happens, I do. Because my father is an American, but of Ukranian Jewish ancestry. His parents were refugees from the Ukraine much earlier, fleeing pogroms.

When ships filled with Jewish refugees left Germany in the late s, they would go to New York and to Canada and they were turned away. Most of them were turned away. If they would have gone back to Germany, those refugees would have gone to concentration camps.

So instead, they anchored in Havana Harbor. They turned south and anchored in Havana Harbor. And stayed there trying to negotiate visas and asylum for the refugees. And most of the ships did eventually receive permission for the refugees to disembark and receive asylum.

So, in essence, what happened is people who left Germany as refuges, thinking they were going to New York to be reunited with relatives who were already there or thinking that they needed to learn English and that they were going to be New Yorkers, actually ended up becoming Cubans. And they needed to learn Spanish. And they needed to learn how to adapt to the tropical climate and so forth. And I learned that Cuban teenagers volunteered to teach Spanish to some of these refugees.

And to me, that was a very inspiring act of kindness. So I really was touched by those, it's so hard to find, you know, positive things to say about the Holocaust.

And I don't mean to minimize the act of suffering. But I did want to write about the aspect of hope rather than the aspect of suffering. I didn't want to set this book in a place where people were not surviving. I wanted to look at what had happened to those who did receive the kindness of strangers and did survive.

I just wanted every detail of daily life. I wanted diaries where people not only tell you what they ate for breakfast, but they tell you what their emotions were during their daily lives. And it's something that you don't find in history books written later. You have to actually go back to the first person accounts written at that time. Well, I kept coming across the references to the letters and diaries of Fredrika Bremer, a Swedish suffragette, a Swedish women's rights activist, who was also a travel writer.

She had traveled and written about the daily lives of women in Scandinavia. And then she set sail for the Americas. And then went to Cuba in And she wrote letters back to European royalty. And diaries, extremely detailed diaries, about her experiences in Cuba.

She explored the countryside and wrote about slavery in a way that Cubans at the time were not doing. Partly because of censorship. It was illegal for Cubans to write about slavery. But she was an outsider. She was Swedish and had her freedom to write as an outsider.

And she chose to use that freedom to tell about what she was singing. She kind of served as a witness. And I'm very grateful that her diaries were published in English at the time, as well as in Swedish. So that I was able to read them. Some were also published in Spanish. But if all of that writing had only been in Swedish, I never would have known anything about it. But by being able to find English and Spanish copies of her letters and diaries, I was really able to appreciate her friendship with a young, African born, slave girl who was assigned to be her translator while she was in Cuba.

The Swedish consulate found her a place to stay out in the countryside. She wanted to see how ordinary people lived. She didn't want to be with all the wealthy people and their palaces in the city. Which probably shocked them. Because they would have assumed that anybody would want to learn about their daily lives rather than those of the slaves and the poor people.

But her translator, Cecelia, really fascinated me. I'm not sure if she was a teenager. She was just referred to as a very young woman. And she was pregnant. And she was sick. She had what sounded like tuberculosis. But she wandered around the countryside with Fredrika Bremer, translating because she had been taught English in order to serve as a translator in the sugar mills between, translating between African language and Spanish and English which was spoken by the American engineers in the sugar mills.

And Fredrika Bremer spoke English, but not Spanish. So Cecelia's role was to help her with whatever she wanted to do. And what she wanted to do was interview slaves and free blacks as she wandered around the countryside.