<\/i><\/p>\n

\nThis week I had the incredible opportunity to listen to an amazing writer and friend Pam Mu\u00f1oz Ryan<\/a> connect with children in a surprise visit to the 5th grade class of the San Diego Cooperative Charter School. Their insightful teacher Mary Lau had shared with me a month earlier that she was reading Pam’s unforgettable book Esperanza Rising<\/a><\/i> to her class, as it was a personal favorite. This magical book won the Pura Belpr\u00e9 and was featured in the NY Times article cited above this week on reaching young Latino readers. I will never forget the look on the faces of the kids and the gasps<\/i> when Pam walked into the room. Mrs. Lau whipped out her accordion and the kids sang Las Ma\u00f1anitas<\/i> to wish Pam a happy birthday. The room was filled with excitement and questions.
\nPam and I worked together on our book Our California<\/a> <\/i>and I was honored to have my artwork used on Pam’s website. Fortunately my son’s school is rich in diversity. Like many other public schools I have visited across the country I relish the sparkle in a child’s eye when they see themselves in the characters of books. I see my own child growing up with an appreciation of the tapestry that is our world and the unique threads that tie us all together.<\/p>\n

I count myself lucky to make pictures that mirror the richness of those diverse experiences.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hispanic students now make up nearly a quarter of the nation’s public school enrollment, according to an analysis of census data by the Pew Hispanic Center, and are the fastest-growing segment of the school population. Yet nonwhite Latino children seldom see themselves in books written for young readers. New York Times article.  For Young Readers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[188,189,190,191,19,192,193],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rafaellopez.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rafaellopez.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rafaellopez.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rafaellopez.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rafaellopez.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rafaellopez.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rafaellopez.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rafaellopez.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rafaellopez.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}