Exclusive Cover Reveal: A Girl Named Rosita. The Story of Rita Moreno: Actress, Singer, Dancer, Trailblazer!

We are delighted to bring you the exclusive cover reveal for Anansesem contributor Anika Aldamuy Denise's upcoming picture book biography, A Girl Named Rosita. The Story of Rita Moreno: Actress, Singer, Dancer, Trailblazer!. The book, from HarperCollins, will be out on November 3, 2020, just ahead of the film release of Steven Spielberg’s re-imagined West Side Story and the new American Masters PBS documentary about Rita produced by Norman Lear and Lin Manuel Miranda.

Watch the cover reveal video below, then keep reading to learn more about the book.



Anika Aldamuy Denise on A Girl Named Rosita:

I was a musical-theater nerd as a kid. My favorite play was West Side Story because it was the only show I knew of about people who looked like me. When my summer theater camp did the show, I knew I didn’t have the voice for Maria (or Anita), but that didn’t stop me from singing "America" into my hairbrush and watching the film on repeat in preparation for auditions. Rita Moreno was the most beautiful and talented actress and dancer I’d ever seen. And she was Puerto Rican, like me. Watching her in West Side Story—and on The Muppet Show and The Electric Company—made me feel seen. I never forgot the feeling.

Years later, I met Rita at my aunt and uncle’s house. As friends of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in upstate New York, they hosted Rita and her husband for dinner. I was too star-struck to speak! Afterwards, I regretted being so shy. I wished I had thanked her for her talent, perseverance, and activism.

So, this book is my thank you. I’ve heard people say Rita Moreno is "back in the spotlight," with all the recent attention she’s received for her television work, prestigious awards, and the Oscar dress(!), but the truth is, Rita Moreno never left. She has always been here, entertaining and inspiring us. I hope her story encourages young readers to work hard, dream big, and not let others define them. That’s what Rita did for me.

Synopsis from the publisher:

Pura Belpré Honor winner Anika Aldamuy Denise (Planting Stories) and New York Times bestselling illustrator Leo Espinosa (Islandborn) tell the story of Rita Moreno, the Puerto Rican superstar best known for her Oscar-winning performance in the original West Side Story film, in this gorgeous picture book biography.

When young Rosita moved from Puerto Rico to the mainland United States, she didn’t know what to expect—but she knew she loved to sing and dance. Working to overcome the language barrier and bullying she experienced in a strange new country, Rita eventually made her way to Hollywood with a dream to be a star. There, she fought to be seen and heard and eventually reached the pinnacle of success, landing her iconic role in West Side Story and, finally, winning her groundbreaking Oscar.

Brought to life by Leo Espinosa’s bold and vibrant illustrations and Anika Aldamuy Denise’s lyrical text, this gorgeous tribute to the life and career of the first Latinx person to have earned an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony award will inspire little dreamers everywhere.

Informative author’s note and timeline also included. A Spanish-language edition is also available.

About the Author

Anika Aladmuy Denise is a Puerto Rican children's author based in Rhode Island, USA. She is the author of 9 picture books, including Starring Carmen!, Monster Trucks, Baking Day at Grandma’s, Bella and Stella Come Home, and Planting Stories: The Life of Librarian and Storyteller Pura Belpré, which received a 2020 Pura Belpré Author Honor and an NCTE 2020 Orbis Pictus Honor for Outstanding Children’s Nonfiction. Her books have been featured in The New York Times, "Kids’ Indie Next List," Junior Library Guild, A Mighty Girl, Book Riot, the Children’s Book Council’s "Around the World" showcase, and on the Latinx in Kidlit website. Visit her on the Web at www.anikadenise.com.

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[Cover Reveal] Clemente, Corazón de Pueblo: Illustrating the Politics around Roberto Clemente

We are delighted to bring you the exclusive cover reveal for Puerto Rican children's author Wanda I. De Jesús Arvelo’s forthcoming children's book, Clemente, Corazón de Pueblo, a picture book biography of the legendary Puerto Rican baseball player, Roberto Clemente. Rosa Colón, who was a Featured Illustrator in our May 2018 issue, illustrated the book. Victor Maldonado is the book's designer.

Clemente, Corazón de Pueblo is the third book in the Los Súper Gigantes children's book series, a project of the Municipio Autonomo de Carolina (Autonomous Municipality of Carolina) and the Fundación Puertorriqueña de las Humanidades (Puerto Rican Foundation of the Humanities). Each book in the collection highlights a historical figure who has made important contributions to Puerto Rico and the wider world.

In Carolina, Land of Giants, we have many heroes.
Our Roberto Clemente is one of them.
Childhood hero. Sports hero.
Hero to justice. Hero to solidarity.
This is his story.

Ready to see the cover? Watch the video below, then keep reading to learn more about Colón's process illustrating the book, as told by herself.

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Roberto Clemente was an exceptional Puerto Rican baseball player, equally remembered for his illustrious sports career, as for being charitable and outspoken against injustices. Thus, it was no surprise to me that the text for Clemente, Corazón de Pueblo, Wanda I. De Jesús Arvelo’s forthcoming children’s book that I am very proud to have illustrated, was full of history and politics. In order to understand Clemente’s success and extraordinary empathy, one must first understand the events that shaped him into the man everyone admires.

“¿Tiene un obrero el derecho a exigir trato justo?
¡Por supuesto que sí!”

[Does a worker have the right to demand fair treatment?
Of course!]

The Puerto Rican people are suffering but not broken and I wanted that strength to show in my illustration. The color palette is nostalgic without being too sad. I wanted to depict jíbaros (workers) as active and angry, the opposite of the passive or even happy worker in the cane field trope.

“Melchor trabaja de sol a sol
y es justo y solidario
con los obreros que laboran con él.”


[Melchor works from sun up to sun down
And is just and shows solidarity
With the workers who toil with him.]

Clemente learned empathy from his parents, Melchor and Luisa. I illustrated the workers’ clothes to look dirty but not disheveled. Their hands are cut and scarred but still strong.

“Detestaba el discrimen,
las comparaciones,
el trato condescendiente
y el intento de asimilarlo a una cultura que no era la suya.”

[He detested discrimination,
the comparisons,
the condescending treatment
and the attempts to assimilate him to a culture that wasn’t his own]

This spread was a bit challenging. Adding too many scenes depicting racism and the civil rights struggles would’ve been too overwhelming for kids. For this story, it’s more important to show how Clemente is reacting to the racism. I hope that the page works as a conversation starter for teachers and parents.

Adding historical context to children’s stories will spark curiosity about the past and the future. It gives them a way to understand complex situations and can build empathy for different lived experiences. Our children carry the burden of an uncertain future; we need children’s books that help prepare them to fight for it.

Clemente, Corazón de Pueblo hits shelves this summer.

About the Illustrator

Rosa Colón is an illustrator and comic artist based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She has a BA from the University of Puerto Rico and an MA from the University of Brighton, UK, and is passionate about storytelling in sequential art and illustration. She has self-published her comics with her friend, Carla Rodríguez, for over ten years. They are the creators of Soda Pop Comics, the first all female comic collective in Puerto Rico, and Tintero, a comics and art fest focusing on Puerto Rican artists. Rosa has been focusing on non-fiction comics and her work can be found at The Nib and the Eisner nominated anthology Puerto Rico Strong by Lion Forge. Visit her on Twitter: @sodapopcomics, Facebook: @sodapopcomics, and on the web at www.rosacolonguerra.com.

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Exclusive Cover Reveal: Soaring Earth by Margarita Engle

We are delighted and incredibly honoured to bring you the exclusive cover reveal for Anansesem advisory board member Margarita Engle's upcoming verse memoir, Soaring Earth, the companion book to her childhood verse memoir Enchanted Air: Two Cultures, Two Wings, which was a 2016 Pura Belpré Award winner. Engle has done so much to support Anansesem and we couldn't be more thrilled to share her work and continued success.

Watch the video below, then keep reading to learn more about the book.



Margarita Engle on Soaring Earth:

When I wrote my childhood verse memoir, Enchanted Air, my goal was to tell my personal story before all the people who lived through the Cuban revolution and Cold War era are gone. Once our generation passes, others will feel free to oversimplify our complex experience. In fact, the absurd process of romanticizing Cuban history has already begun, with books about the island written by outsiders whose only viewpoint is tourism.

Enchanted Air met its goal of communicating one Cuban-American child’s experience, but I never imagined that I would write a sequel. Soaring Earth is a companion book, showing how I alternately coped and failed to cope with the loss of travel rights that followed the Missile Crisis. Soaring Earth is about my high school and college years. I wrote it because I heard a literacy expert cite drastic statistics regarding the current college dropout rate. I hope that my story of protests, dreams, discouragement, and hopes will resonate with teenagers today, as they face another era of conflict.

I started college at U.C. Berkeley in 1968, dropped out during riots, hitchhiked across the country, became briefly homeless, tried to volunteer to cut sugarcane in Cuba, and when that effort failed, I eventually returned to school, where I found a refuge in studying agriculture, and a source of hope in poetry.

Soaring Earth will be released by Atheneum Books for Young Readers in February, 2019.

About the Author

Margarita Engle is the 2017-2019 national Young People’s Poet Laureate, and a USBBY 2019 Astrid Lindgren Award nominee. She is the Cuban-American author of many verse novels, including The Surrender Tree, a Newbery Honor winner, and The Lightning Dreamer, a PEN USA Award recipient. Her verse memoir, Enchanted Air, received the Pura Belpré Award, Golden Kite Award, Walter Dean Myers Honor, Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, and Arnold Adoff Poetry Award, among others. Drum Dream Girl received the Charlotte Zolotow Award for best picture book text. Her newest books are The Flying Girl: How Aída de Acosta Learned to Soar, and Jazz Owls, a Novel of the Zoot Suit Riots. Pending publication in September is a picture book titled A Dog Named Haku, A Holiday Story From Nepal, co-authored with Amish and Nicole Karanjit. Soaring Earth, a sequel to Enchanted Air, will be published by Atheneum in February, 2019. Margarita was born in Los Angeles, but developed a deep attachment to her mother’s homeland during childhood summers with relatives. She studied agronomy and botany along with creative writing. She lives in central California with her husband and his wilderness search and rescue dogs. Visit her on the Web at Margarita Engle and on Twitter at @YPPLaureate.

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