family

Appearances Giveaways

September 16, 2020

#LetsStayConnected

The woods across the street from my house backs up to the high school field where the marching band rehearses. Every August for almost 20 years, I’ve watched kids trudge in the heat to practice that strange footwork and music skills. And every year, about this time, I get to hear them improve every week. I get to hear the crowds cheer for the home team. It’s quiet now without those squeaky saxophones and thundering bass drums. My dear friend Alice and my daughters. And last week, I watched the nightly news reports about the pandemic with that familiar ache that’s come to define 2020 for me. I tried not to focus on the trick-or-treaters that I’ll miss seeing on Halloween, or on the Thanksgiving Day meal for just the immediate family, not to mention the winter holidays, when I won’t be able to gather the same way with the people I love. In the midst of all of this, too, my picture book Evelyn del Rey is Moving Away (illustrated by Sonia Sánchez) hit shelves. This year is clearly a hard year to connect with readers, but I believe that, in some ways, this book might just be the right story for us all now. Daniela and Evelyn, after all, are two mejor amigas who have to accept a separation and figure out how to make what truly matters endure. So, here’s how I’d like to launch this picture book and help us cope with missing our friends and…

Meg Medina

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Latino Life Random howls into the world

July 30, 2012

How do Latina moms and teens talk about stuff that matters?

This came across my desk this morning, and I wanted to pass it along.You know that I'm big on strong girls, so this seems like a painless way for real people to add to the body of information we have about how we encourage Latina girls to have healthy relationships. If you have a couple of hours to spare and you care about girls and Latino families, contact Carla (info at bottom). She's the study coordinator and graduate student at Virginia Commonwealth University who can answer your questions. Interviews can be conducted in English or Spanish. In addition, interviews can take place in the Richmond or DC metropolitan area. Flyers in English and Spanish here. Study Title: Talking with Adolescents About Healthy Behaviors We are looking for Latina teenagers (14-17 years old) and their mothers to participate in individual interviews about healthy relationships and behaviors. Who can participate in the study? - Latina adolescents who are 14-17 years old - Mothers of Latina adolescents who are 14-17 years old What will I receive if I am in the study? - If you participate in the interview, moms and daughterw will each receive a $20 gift cerfificate to Walmart What do you need to do? - Mothers will need to agree to participate in an interview - Latina adolescents will need to agree to particpate and they will need to get their parent's permission to be interviewed - Particpate in an interview that will take about two hours - Share what you…

Meg Medina

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The Writing Life

April 20, 2011

Win my book on Latin Baby Book Club

I took my son, the baby of our family, to see colleges this weekend -- a road trip that featured a lot of sweet memories, perhaps fueled by eating too much ice cream made on an on-campus creamery. Yum. But that wasn't the only delicious thing that happened. I was also featured on Latin Baby Book Club.(Check it out; you can win a free copy of TIA ISA WANTS A CAR). How I wish I'd had a blog like that 15 years ago when I was raising my own "latin babies" and teaching them to love books - and their roots. We live in Richmond, Virginia, a southern city with a growing Latino population, but it's not like other places we've lived, like South Florida, where Latino culture has so significantly shaped communities. Nobody here was whipping out an empanada from their lunch sack. Cinco de Mayo and Three Kings Day was about all anybody knew. My three kids are all American in so many ways. In fact, they speak Spanish so poorly that their abuelas can barely forgive me. Back then, they read Lily's Purple Plastic Purse and the Magic Treehouse series and Harry Potter. Still, something like Latin Baby Book Club might have helped me do the important work of making my kids proud of where they come from. Sure, you can't keep Latino kids from being as American as anybody else in their class. (Ask my mother; she'll tell you.) It's inevitable; you belong to the place you…

Meg Medina

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Random howls into the world The Writing Life Uncategorized

April 4, 2011

Tía Isa: the book and the woman

I never thought of myself as a picture book writer, but this June all that changes. TÍA ISA WANTS A CAR (Candlewick Press) will be in bookstores. It’s the story of a girl and her favorite aunt working together to buy the first family car. I wrote the text when I was in between novels and needed to play with words for a while to clear my mind. I'd been thinking about my aunt and our first family car – an old Buick Wildcat. It was a dented heap that never wanted to start, and it stalled at the most inconvenient times – like in the middle of a u-turn with on-coming traffic. Truth is, though, that the car was only half the trouble. My aunt – the real tía Isa – was a lousy driver. She'd arrived in this country in 1968, having completed a year of required labor in Cuba’s sugar cane fields to earn her way off that island. Maybe as the result of all she’d been through during the revolution (or maybe just because she was cursed with “anxious genes” as is common in my clan), tía Isa was a ball of nerves, filled with ticks and odd habits that sometimes frightened me as a kid. Her jumpy lip always reminded me of a bunny’s. In any case, when she came home one day with her driver’s license, the family was shocked but grateful for the milagro. A car – even an old jalopy like the…

Meg Medina

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