Ready for our latest selection of bilingual picture books? From a pair of brothers with different tastes in birthday parties to a loving home and neighborhood to an origin myth about how the Day of the Dead came to be, our fall titles have a little something for everyone! A Bean and Cheese Taco Birthday / Un cumpleaños con tacos de frijoles con queso Seven-year-old Dario is excited about his brother’s upcoming fifth birthday. He can’t wait for the party, and imagines one similar to his own with lots of friends and presents. So he’s surprised when Ariel requests a simple celebration at the park eating bean and cheese tacos and blowing bubbles. “But, Ariel,” he asks, “don’t you want to go somewhere special on your birthday?” It doesn’t seem like a party to Dario without video games and pizza! On Ariel’s birthday, the boys are happy to go to the park rather than …
Spooky Stories for October
Are you looking for some chilling tales to read before bedtime this October? We’ve gathered up a collection of creepy cuentos that will give you goosebumps and send shivers down your spine (Arte Público is not responsible for any scary dreams)! Brujas, lechuzas y espantos / Witches, Owls and Spooks In this bilingual collection of five stories, Don Cecilio tells the neighborhood children stories that make their hair stand on end. “In my barrio they told the story…” and so his cuento would begin. In “The Owl and the Bundle,” young Tomás disappears without a trace. Distraught, his parents and siblings look for him everywhere with no luck. Upon returning home, his father sees something curious, an owl flying above the house carrying a bundle with its talons. “Is it possible,” he wonders, “that the bundle is Little Tomás?” Could the owl have taken their precious son? Based on oral tradition, these stories …
Texas Author’s Teen Collection Wins Award!
HOUSTON, TX October 2015— Diane Gonzales Bertrand’s bilingual collection of short stories for teens, There’s a Name for This Feeling: Stories / Hay un nombre para lo que siento: Cuentos, has been named the Middle Grade/Young Adult Discovery Prize Winner in the 2014 Writers’ League of Texas Book Awards. Established in 1991, the awards recognize the year’s outstanding books published by Texas authors. Bertrand’s short and accessible contemporary stories are alternately amusing and poignant as they explore issues relevant to today’s youth. In the title story, Lucinda hatches a clever plan to get her boyfriend back and is crushed when she ultimately realizes that it’s impossible to force a guy to love you. Like all young people, she ignores the advice of her mom and learns that lesson—and many more—the hard way. In these short stories for young people, kids deal with both serious and humorous consequences after they ignore their …
Author on the Airwaves: Xavier Garza
Garza chosen as August 2015’s “Author of the Month” on Houston Public Media Houston Public Media radio host Eric Ladau interviewed Garza for its website’s “Arte Público Press Author of the Month” feature, and along with the transcript, their conversation is available to listeners on the station’s interactive site through on-demand audio streaming here. Click here to see all Arte Público authors featured on Houston Public Media. About the Author: XAVIER GARZA is a prolific author, artist, and storyteller whose work focuses primarily on his experiences growing up in the small border town of Rio Grande City. His work includes Maximilian & the Mystery of the Guardian Angel (Cinco Puntos Press, 2011), a Pura Belpré Honor Book; Kid Cyclone Fights the Devil and Other Stories / Kid Ciclón se enfrenta a El Diablo y otras historias (Piñata Books, 2010); Zulema and the Witch Owl / Zulema y la Bruja Lechuza (Piñata Books, 2009); Juan and …
Author on the Airwaves: Raquel Ortiz
Ortiz chosen as June 2015’s “Author of the Month” on Houston Public Media Houston Public Media radio host Eric Ladau interviewed Ortiz for its website’s “Arte Público Press Author of the Month” feature, and along with the transcript, their conversation is available to listeners on the station’s interactive site through on-demand audio streaming here. Click here to see all Arte Público authors featured on Houston Public Media. About the Author: RAQUEL M. ORTIZ was born and raised in Lorain, Ohio, and has been making art and telling stories ever since she was a little girl. She holds a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of Salamanca and has worked at The Brooklyn Museum, the Allen Memorial Art Museum and El Museo del Barrio. Raquel is the author of El arte de la identidad (La Galera, 2011), the documentary Memories of the Wall: Education and Enrichment through Community Murals and textbooks and educational materials for children in Puerto Rico and …
Author on the Airwaves: Gwendolyn Zepeda
Zepeda chosen as May 2015’s “Author of the Month” on Houston Public Media Houston Public Media radio host Eric Ladau interviewed Zepeda for its website’s “Arte Público Press Author of the Month” feature, and along with the transcript, their conversation is available to listeners on the station’s interactive site through on-demand audio streaming here. Click here to see all Arte Público authors featured on Houston Public Media. About the Author: GWENDOLYN ZEPEDA, Houston’s first poet laureate, is the author of several books for adults and children. She is the author of two poetry collections, Monsters, Zombies and Addicts (Arte Público Press, 2015) and Falling in Love with Fellow Prisoners (Arte Público Press, 2013); a short story collection, To the Last Man I Slept with and All the Jerks Just Like Him (Arte Público Press, 2004); three novels, Better with You Here (Grand Central Publishing, 2012), Lone Star Legend (Grand Central Publishing, 2010) and Houston, …
Author on the Airwaves: Gwendolyn Zepeda
Zepeda chosen as March 2015’s “Author of the Month” on Houston Public Media Houston Public Media radio host Eric Ladau interviewed Zepeda for its website’s “Arte Público Press Author of the Month” feature, and along with the transcript, their conversation is available to listeners on the station’s interactive site through on-demand audio streaming here. Click here to see all Arte Público authors featured on Houston Public Media. If you ask Houston author Gwendolyn Zepeda about her proudest experience as Houston’s first poet laureate, she’ll probably tell you about the time she cried. In a good way. “We did a four-week workshop here at the downtown central library and at the end of it, one person told me that she had taken a lot of poetry classes in her life and that mine was the first one where she actually felt that she had learned something and she felt that she could go forward and …
Our Tejas Stars Shine Brightly!
Four Piñata Books for Kids Chosen for Tejas Star Reading List HOUSTON, TX February 2015—Four books published as part of Arte Público’s imprint for children and young adults, Piñata Books, were chosen for the 2015-16 Tejas Star Reading List. The Tejas Star Reading List (TSRL) is developed to encourage children ages 5-12 to explore multicultural books and to discover the cognitive and economic benefits of bilingualism and multilingualism. Sponsored by the Texas Library Association, the TSRL is intended for recreational reading and not to support a specific curriculum. The program began as the Tejas Star Book Award, created by the Region One ESC Library Advisory Committee. The Texas Library Association assumed responsibility for the list in 2012. Texas schoolchildren will read the books on the list and vote for their favorite one. The four Piñata Books selected for consideration are: Dale, dale, dale: Una fiesta de números / Hit It, …
Author on the Airwaves: Ray Villareal
Villareal chosen as February 2015’s “Author of the Month” on Houston Public Media Houston Public Media radio host Eric Ladau interviewed Villareal for its website’s “Arte Público Press Author of the Month” feature, and along with the transcript, their conversation is available to listeners on the station’s interactive site through on-demand audio streaming here. Click here to see all Arte Público authors featured on Houston Public Media. About the Author: RAY VILLAREAL is the author of five novels for young adults that capture the angst of adolescent life: Body Slammed! (Piñata Books, 2012), Don’t Call Me Hero (Piñata Books, 2011), Who’s Buried in the Garden? (Piñata Books, 2009), winner of LAUSD’s Westchester Fiction Award, Alamo Wars (Piñata Books, 2008), and My Father, the Angel of Death (Piñata Books, 2006), which was nominated to the 2008-2009 Lone Star Reading List and named to The New York Public Library’s 2007 Books for the Teen Age. His latest …
Author on the Airwaves: Lydia Gil
Gil chosen as January 2015’s “Author of the Month” on Houston Public Media Houston Public Media radio host Eric Ladau interviewed Gil for its website’s “Arte Público Press Author of the Month” feature, and along with the transcript, their conversation is available to listeners on the station’s interactive site through on-demand audio streaming here. Click here to see all Arte Público authors featured on Houston Public Media. About the Author: LYDIA GIL was born in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, of Cuban parents. She is the author of a bilingual “flip” book for intermediate readers, Letters from Heaven / Cartas del cielo (Piñata Books, 2014), and a bilingual children’s picture book, Mimí’s Parranda / La parranda de Mimí (Piñata Books, 2007). She teaches at the University of Denver and writes for EFE, the leading Spanish-language news agency. She holds a Ph.D. in Spanish from the University of Texas at Austin and a Master of Arts in Comparative …