Margarita Engle

Margarita Engle, the national Young People's Poet Laureate, is the Cuban-American author of many verse novels, including The Surrender Tree, a Newbery Honor winner, The Lightning Dreamer, a PEN USA Award winner. Her verse memoir, Enchanted Air, received the Pura Belpré Award, Golden Kite Award, Walter Dean Myers Honor, and Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, among others. Her other books have received multiple Pura Belpré, Américas, and Jane Addams Awards and Honors, as well as a Claudia Lewis Poetry Award, and International Reading Association Award. Her picture book, Drum Dream Girl, received the Charlotte Zolotow Award for best picture book text.

Engle's latest books include Forest World and All the Way to Havana.

From her May 2017 Q&A with Angelica Shirley Carpenter at School Library Journal:

What was it like to have new Cuban titles, especially your childhood memoir, Enchanted Air, come out just as the United States took action to improve relations with Cuba?

Drum Dream Girl is about perseverance in seeking freedom, so it seems appropriate for a time when women are still struggling for equal rights. Advanced review copies of Enchanted Air arrived on my doorstep during the week when President Obama announced a restoration of diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba. The book was released very close to the day when the U.S. Embassy in Havana reopened after more than half a century of Cold War hostility. Fortunately, in between those two thrilling moments, I was able to revise the historical note and time line at the end of the book, changing a memoir that had been intended as a plea for peace into a song of thanks.

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What advice can you offer to parents or teachers who discuss the changes in Cuba with children?

Cuba has been marginalized by the United States for so long that you have to start out with a map, even with adults. The map makes it clear that this country is one of our closest neighbors—and that neighbors can be friends. I’m always saddened when children ask me, “What is Cuba?” instead of, “Where is Cuba?” That means they haven’t studied their close neighbor in class. Recently I met a high school U.S. history teacher who actually asked me...[read on]

Visit Margarita Engle's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Margarita Engle & Maggi and Chance.

My Book, The Movie: The Lightning Dreamer.

My Book, The Movie: Mountain Dog.

The Page 69 Test: Silver People.

The Page 99 Test: Enchanted Air.

The Page 69 Test: Lion Island.

Writers Read: Margarita Engle (September 2016).

--Marshal Zeringue