New Books on the way...

Please keep an eye out for my upcoming books, “La Cazuela that the Farm Maiden Stirred” by Samantha Vamos on the shelves in early 2011 and “My Name is Tito” by Monica Brown. You can pre-order La Cazuela at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.



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Our California

Our California. Written by Pam Muñoz Ryan.
The art in this loving tribute to the state is so colorful, evocative, and eye-filling that it is tempting to review the title solely as a book of pictures. The text takes the form of brief, four-line verses that highlight interesting features in the 14 locales, or give reasons for their historical or current importance. Some of the places are well known (such as San Francisco and Los Angeles) and some will be less familiar to children outside California (such as the Channel Islands and Eureka). The illustrations, done in brilliant acrylics, fill each spread with a burst of folkloric color and energy. The Capistrano swallows, the Forty-Niners in Coloma, the whales and otters along the coast—all are shown. The back matter includes an illustrated spread featuring the state flag, bird, insect, plant, and so on. It is a wonderful way to show children the spirit of California, and it could also be useful for families planning vacations.
-School Library Journal














THOUGHTS ON CREATING OUR CALIFORNIA:
I'm a big fan of Pam Muñoz Ryan's work and really had fun with the poetic journey she crafted through California, my adopted home. When I was offered this story I wanted to do more than a guidebook but speak from a personal perspective. I packed up the car and brought along the family traveling thousands of miles of the Golden State in search of colors and textures. The California coastline yielded a riot of hues and ideas for this book from San Diego to San Francisco. When Spanish galleons sailed up and down the shores in the 18th century, mariners chronicled the deep orange and yellow wildflowers of the region and called it the "land of fire". This picture I shot of my mother and son in Central California shows you why.


The twisted, dangerous San Simeon Highway was built by convicts in the twenties and thirties. It's an amazing feat and the cliffs plunge into the churning sea rich with islands of shifting kelp.


At Cannery Row we sampled clam chowder and watched sea kayaks and seals dodging the waves. Steinbeck got it right when he wrote about this place. The next day in sheets of rain we drove North to Moss's Landing for garlic shrimp at a local Fish Trap.



Traveling with my young son I watched him explore the beaches and climb rocks. We built fantastic forts out of pieces of driftwood at Moonstone Beach and on this journey I wanted to see things through his eyes.


The bounty of California's farmlands is legendary and I am greatly inspired by Mexican muralists like Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros. I wanted to convey the richness of the harvest and spirit of farm workers whose labor and gentle hands bring this bounty to our tables.


The deserts of California are filled with magical creatures and mystical rock paintings. I tried to bring some of the rich symbolism and patterns of native cultures out to play in the heat of the day.


Birds are messengers from heaven and here I was remembering watching the swallows perform their aerodynamic ballet when returning to San Juan Capistrano.



California is a state of mind and returning to my studio in San Diego I brought these memories to my drawing table and got started. I found a wonderful shell here on China Beach that I used to drag textures into the painted wood. A gift from the sea that helps me with my work.

My Name is CELIA-ME LLAMO CELIA

Winner of the Americas Award for Illustration: Children's and Young Adult Literature and a Pura Belpré Honor for Illustration.

My Name is Celia. Me Llamo Celia. Written by Monica Brown.

BOOK REVIEWS

My name is Celia: The life of Celia Cruz by Monica Brown is an exuberant picture-book biography of the Cuban-born salsa singer. From its rhythmic opening, the first-person narrative dances readers through Cruz's youth in Havana, a childhood bounded by scents of nature and home, the sweet taste of sugar, and the sound of music. A singer from an early age, Cruz sang so continually that one of her teachers finally urged her to share her voice with the world. Thus encouraged, she entered competitions, undeterred when her racial heritage prevented her from competing - undeterred, even, when the advent of Castro's communist regime forced her to leave Cuba as a refugee. Positive even in exile, Cruz made New York City her own and took Miami by storm. The salsa-influenced prose presented in English and in Spanish is followed by a straightforward vita of the singer, noting her death in July 2003. Lopez's distinguished, luminous acrylic paintings are alive with motion, lush with brilliantly layered colors, and informed with verve and symbolism. This is a brilliant introduction to a significant woman and her music. The only enhancement required is the music itself.
-from Del Sol Books


THINKING ABOUT MY NAME IS CELIA:
This was my first children's book and I couldn't have been more inspired by the subject- the late great Celia Cruz. What a great opportunity to work with the talented Monica Brown. Monica and I have continued to collaborate and enjoy speaking around the country to schools and conferences about how writers and illustrators work together. I can't tell you how much music fuels my work and in my opinion there is nothing like Latin Jazz. I filled my studio with the exuberant power of her voice and began to draw. I made mood boards with images of her, watched videos of her performances and tried to dig deeper into her own words to conjure the right vibe for these paintings. The queen of Latin rhythm said "Afro-Cuban music is the root of today's Salsa. It is steeped in cultural indentity and embraces the folklore of every town and province of the tropics. It is a source of pride, of happiness, of being alive. It is what I bring to the people."


In this scene I show her sitting on the lap of her big, strong father and listening to him tell stories about working on the railroad. Later in life Celia said "In a sense, I have fulfilled my father's wish to be a teacher as, through my music I teach generations of people about my culture and the happiness that can be found in just living life. As a performer, I want people to feel their hearts sing and their spirits soar."


This scene shows Celia and her cousin Nenita traveling far and wide by bus in Cuba to sing in competitions. I needed to leave space for the text in both English and Spanish and so I used this diagonally flowing composition to show movement.


New York became Celia's new home and I hoped to show her excitement at arriving in such a place filled with diverse cultures and people, lights and music.


Celia sang with Tito Puente, Johnny Pacheco and Willie Colon bringing salsa to the Americas. These legends brought Latin music into the spotlight and made it known worldwide.

My wife and I love dancing and I was lucky enough to create a stamp for the United States Postal Service about Latin music. The contribution of Celia Cruz and her contemporaries is enormous because their music blended rock with rumba and mambo with jazz.


Indeed Celia is the queen of Latin music having recorded more than 50 albums. She broke down racial and cultural barriers in the process with her exceptional talent, passion and perseverance. As an illustrator I like to juxtapose unrelated things to form new symbols. In this case a musical note becomes her crown.


Here this red bird represents the free flying joy that is her music. I wanted to showcase her potent life force, that wonderful smile and her flamboyant costumes.


Before and after her performances Celia would yell out these famous words "Azucar" sprinkling her audiences with sugar. In the paintings for this book, in the faces of the characters, with color and texture I tried to synthesize the timeless magic of her music.

Yum! MmMm! ¡Qué Rico!

Winner of the Americas Award for Illustration. Children's and Young Adult Literature.

"Yum! ¡MmMm! ¡Qué Rico! Americas’ Sproutings. Written by Pat Mora

BOOK REVIEWS

This concept book serves as a delicious introduction to 14 types of food, all of which have their origins in the Americas. Snippets of information and a haiku poem accompany each one, ranging from blueberry and chili pepper through papaya, prickly pear, and vanilla. Using English and a smattering of Spanish words, Mora crafts a playful introduction to each one, as in "Pumpkin": "Under round luna,/scattered tumblings down the rows,/autumn's orange face." The sense of whimsy is further underscored in López's colorful acrylic on wood-panel illustrations. Artful compositions and brilliant complementary colors bear out the book's multicultural themes. The art conveys an infectious sense of fun, as smiling suns and moons beam down upon happy children and animals, along with a trumpet-wielding peanut-butter sandwich and a dancing pineapple. Teachers will find this a welcome addition to their social-studies units, but it should also win a broad general audience for its inventive, fun-filled approach to an ever-popular topic: food.
—School Library Journal

THOUGHTS ABOUT YUM!:
The painting on top of the dad exclaiming 'this heat tastes good" was my favorite. Being from Mexico, I have a deep desire to put chile on everything. I dedicated this book to my mother Pillo, an amazing cook and even wrote my own haiku for her.

For my mother Pillo
blooming in her cocina
aromatic poems of love.

My friend Pat Mora's wonderful haiku, seventeen-syllable poems of Japanese origin inspired the paintings for this book. The words given to me by the writer are the sparks that ignite my drawings. I like to write them out in my own handwriting and tape them up to the walls of my workspace. I try to find clues in the words that will help me paint the picture but I always avoid being literal and mirroring the text verbatim. Instead I choose to communicate the spirit of an idea. Eating blueberries is like riding barefoot on the back of a giant soaring blue bird on a summers day.



BLUEBERRY:
Fill your mouth with blue.
Share a bowl heaped with summer.
Chew indigo O.


PAPAYA:
Chewing your perfume,
we taste your leafy jungle.
Yum! Juicy tropics.


PRICKLY PEAR:
Red desert wonder.
Cactus fruit becomes syrup and dulces.
Surprise!



CHOCOLATE:
Fudge, cake, pie, cookies.
Brown magic melts on our tongue.
Happy, your eyes dance.

Of course doing your research is important and so I visited the farmers market regularly during this project. I was also able to justify eating as much chocolate as needed to get just the right expression on the face of the character above.