Junot Díaz wrote a children’s book y’all! The Pulitzer prize-winning author’s first children’s book ☛ISLANDBORN [pub: Dial Books for Young Readers] drops March 13, 2018. with beautiful illustrations by Leo Espinosa.
Per The New York Times:
“Islandborn” features a young girl named Lola who lives in Washington Heights and was born in the Dominican Republic. When she is given a school assignment to draw a picture of the place her parents came from, she can’t conjure an image of the island, which she left as a baby. So she asks family members about their memories of home. Some relatives share joyful stories, while others recall heartbreaking and frightening moments from the country’s dark past. Lola draws pictures and begins to assemble her own version of the island from the conflicting fragments of her family’s stories. “It ties to my own Dominican immigrant identity,”
said Mr. Díaz, 48, who was born in Santo Domingo and grew up in New Jersey. As a voracious young reader, he rarely saw characters who looked like him.
“It was an absence I felt acutely,”
he said.
With its timely themes of immigration and multiculturalism, “Islandborn” could help Mr. Díaz break into a lucrative new market. (Dial plans to print 150,000 copies.)
What do you think?
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