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"Open a Door... Open a Book...
Open your Mind to the World"7th Annual International Children's Literature
and Young Adult Literature CelebrationSaturday, November 22, 2008
Tripp Commons, Memorial Union, Madison, WIAbout the Authors
Meshack Asare Meshack Asare is one of Africa's top children's writers and illustrators, and has won numerous awards including The Noma Award for Publishing in Africa. 1982 and the 1999 Toyota/Children's Literature Foundation Best Picture Story Book Illustrator's award, the 1999 Unesco First Prize for Children and Young People's Literature in the Service of Tolerance. Meshack Asare, born 1945 in Ghana, studied Fine Arts at the College of Art in Kumasi and taught in Ghana for 12 years between 1967 and 1979. During that period, he took an extension course in Educational Psychology at the University of Wisconsin.
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Bodil Bredsdorff Bodil Bredsdorff was born and grew up in Hillerød in the northern part of the large Danish island called Zealand. After having lived in various places in Denmark, she eventually returned to the area of her birthplace and has lived for the past ten years on the northwestern coast in a small fishing port called Hundested. This is where she writes her books when she is not away giving lectures on her authorship. She is frequently invited to speak to children at schools all around Denmark.
Margarita Engle Margarita Engle was born in Los Angeles to a Cuban mother and an American father. Her mother was from the quaint Cuban town of Trinidad, where very little had changed since colonial times. Her father, a painter, traveled to Cuba to paint the picturesque town of her mother's birth after reading about it in a 1947 issue of National Geographic. Her parents did not speak the same language when they met, married and moved to Los Angeles. Her mother eventually learned English, but she never lost her longing for the island of her birth. She listened to Cuban music and told her daughter enchanting tales of her beautiful island. Her mother worried about relatives left behind, many who were bearded rebels fighting to overthrow Batista's repressive police state. Engle absorbed her mother's nostalgia for Cuba. A visit to Cuba in the summer of 1960 reinforced these feelings of longing for Cuba, and exposed her to the peasants' hopefulness following the revolution. She fell in love with her great-uncle's dairy farm that summer, and he became her hero because he understood nature and could grow food from the earth.
Margarita Engle received both the Americas Award and the Pura Belpre Award for her book, The Poet Slave of Cuba (Illustrated by Sean Qualls. New York: Henry Holt, 2006) in which Margarita Engle sensitively takes the reader back in time to the life of a Cuban slave. Juan Francisco Manzano was born into slavery on a wealthy sugar plantation. As a small child, separated from his birth family and raised as a “pet,” Manzano provided entertainment for his owners by reciting poetry and prose for the elite. As an adult, though beaten and inhumanely treated, Manzano’s talent for writing evolved and survived despite censorship and laws. Margarita Engle chose poetry to tell his story. Her use of point of view gives insight to Juan Francisco Manzano’s feelings and hideous treatment as a slave, as well as insight into his slave masters. Sean Qualls’ black and white illustrations enhance the division of the two worlds. The author gives an historical note about Manzano, the poet slave, and includes some samples of Juan Francisco Manzano’s original Spanish poetry (10-12).
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Cynthia Kadohata Since publishing her first novel, The Floating World, in 1989, Cynthia Kadohata has been viewed as one of the most compelling novelists in the United States. At the same time, she has tended to be described as a Japanese American writer, a distinction the author feels is both flattering and misleading. In her work Kadohata does explore the complications that come with having a "hyphenated heritage," or two heritages, however she believes that her novels have a more universal appeal. One reason is that all of her books are coming-of-age stories that explore such common themes as feeling different and struggling to find an identity. Another reason that Kadohata's books are so appealing is that she draws from her own childhood experiences. In 2004 she mined those memories to pen Kira-Kira, her first novel aimed at a younger audience. For her efforts Kadohata was awarded the 2005 Newbery Award for excellence in children's writing. It was an amazing feat for a first-time children's author.
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