"Exemplifies the best of recent multicultural publishing". -- The Horn Book

When her great-aunt, her tia, turns ninety, little Cecilia lovingly gathers together a basket full of memories. "Vibrant, detailed cut-paper illustrations portray family warmth and individuality with verve and panache". -- School Library Journal

An award-winning author and a rising star artist have put a festive Latino twist on "The Twelve Days of Christmas," populating it with pinatas in place of partridges, plus "burritos bailando" (dancing donkeys), "lunitas cantando" (singing moons), and much more, all displayed in the most vivid colors imaginable. In this version a little girl receives gifts from a secret "amiga, "whose identity is a sweet surprise at the book's conclusion. There are things to find and count in Spanish on every page, with pronunciations provided right in the pictures and a glossary and music following the story. This joyous fiesta will warm even the coldest of hearts.

A poetic depiction of the desert as the provider of comfort, food, spirit, and life.

""Baa-baa," sang the lamb.
"Shoo, go play," said Francis,
but the little lamb just grinned
and trotted happily behind the man
who preached to people and dogs
and flowers and fish and frogs."

With lilting verse and playful imagery, award-winning author Pat Mora celebrates the tender relationship between the beloved saint and the animals he loved. Woodcut artist David Frampton captures the exuberant songs of Francis and the animals in charming, colorful woodcuts that underscore the harmony between humans and the natural world.

Inspired by Saint Francis's own reverence and love for animals, this book will encourage readers young and old to join in with the clucks of the chickens, the whirring of the cicadas, and the songs of the nightingale.

Monica, who wants to be a baker like her grandmother, finds the doll hidden in the bread on the feast for the Three Kings and thus gets to bake cookies for the next fiesta.

As a Chicana, educator, poet, mother, lecturer, and native of El Paso, Texas, Pat Mora is a denizen of "nepantla"--a Nahuatl word meaning "land in the middle." In her first collection of essays this award-winning writer negotiates the middle land's many terrains by exploring the personal issues and political responsibilities she faces as a woman of color in the United States. Characterized by a keen sense of community, "Nepantla" is an important contribution to the growing body of Chicano nonfiction.

Mora explores the issues of cultural preservation--preservation of her own Mexican American culture as a source for her creativity and for her sense of self. She then remembers her encounters with other cultures, which have taught her both to appreciate and to spotlight the stunning riches and injustices of her own country. Mora's insights on bilingualism, education, women, and family are sometimes barbed and always exact. Sprinkled like blossoms on a springtime cholla, excerpts from Mora's own poems crystallize her thoughts and insights into unforgettable images.

The first bilingual picture book published under the Pinata Books imprint in 1994, Pat Mora's ode to the desert is finally available in paperback format. The Desert Is My Mother introduces the partnership of an award-winning poet and a prize-winning painter to create a beautiful poetic and artistic rendition of the relationship between people and nature. Rather than being an expanse empty of life and value, the desert is lovingly presented as the provider of comfort, food, spirit, and life.

Always amigos!" My Singing Nana is a compassionate tribute to families dealing with Alzheimer's Disease. This story celebrates the ideals of family, heritage, and happy memories, showing kids that no matter how their loved one might change they always have ways to maintain their special connection.

"A gentle text and innovative artwork depict a pivotal summer in a boy's life when he and his family leave their Texas home for farm work in Iowa. One morning, while his parents pick corn, Tomás visits the imposing town library and meets a kindly librarian who gently coaxes him inside. Throughout the hot days thereafter, she offers Tomás cool drinks of water and adventurous escapes into books; on slow days he teaches her Spanish until it's time to return home to Texas: 'I have a sad word to teach you today. The word is adiós. It means good-bye.' . . . While young readers and future librarians will find this an inspiring tale, the end note gives it a real kick: the story is based on an actual migrant worker [Tomás Rivera] who became chancellor of a university--where the library now bears his name."--Publishers Weekly

Pat Mora, an award-winning poet and author and a frequent guest speaker in schools, colleges, and libraries, has lead popular workshops on literacy and teacher creativity. Her workshop, Nurturing Creativity: Seven Practices for Educators and Students provided the foundation for this book as a response to numerous requests from teachers who were driven by the need to express themselves creatively and to nurture the creativity of their students. Each practice for nurturing personal creativity has a corollary practice for nurturing student creativity. Throughout the book, Mora reaffirms her conviction that creative teachers are more effective teachers and emphasizes that every child's creative self must be valued-regardless of a child's cultural and linguistic background. Written in the form of letters to teachers, Zing! Seven Creativity Practices for Educators and Students is a moving and inspirational volume that serves as a reminder to teachers that their work is important and that they are, indeed, community leaders.

Combining poetic language and the traditions of magic realism to paint a vivid portrait of her family, Pat Mora's House of Houses is an unconventional memoir that reads as if every member, death notwithstanding, is in one room talking, laughing, and crying. In a salute to the Day of the Dead, the story begins with a visit to the cemetery in which all of her deceased relatives come alive to share stories of the family, literally bringing the food to their own funerals. From there the book covers a year in the life of her clan, revealing the personalities and events that Mora herself so desperately yearns to know and understand.
"Poet Mora's complex and dramatic family history comprises more than personal reminiscences: it also embraces resonant aspects of Mexican American history. Mora recounts her family's traumatic exodus from Mexico to escape the violence of Pancho Villa and his forces and their struggles to begin new lives in another country. To anchor her psychologically rich, dramatic, sometimes funny, often touching multigenerational tale, Mora uses the image of a house--the house of houses--during a single year, a fruitful metaphor that allows her to dwell on the bright beauty of flowers, birds, and trees, emblems of the loving legacy of her nurturing family."--"Booklist"
"Mora has created an ingenious structure for these recollections of her extended family, of their lives and the tales they share about the family's history. Woven in with these memories are recipes, fragments of songs and poetry, folk remedies, and jokes, all of the small matters that most reveal a family's identity. In a language deftly mingling the natural cadences of speech and precise, poetic imagery, Mora believably summons up both a group of tough, loving, idiosyncratic survivors and a vivid, detailed portrait of life in the Southwest in the last century." --"Kirkus Reviews"

Drawing on oral and lyrical traditions, this book honors the grace and spirit of mothers, daughters, lovers, and goddesses. From a tribute to Frida Kahlo to advice from an Aztec goddess, the poems explore the intimate and sacred spaces of borderlands through many voices: a revolutionary, a domestic worker, a widow.