En Pocas Palabras. Javier J. Jaspe
Washington D.C.
“The 2023 National Book Festival was held in the
nation’s capital at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center on Saturday,
August 12, from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Several programs were livestreamed, and video
of all talks can be viewed online shortly after the Festival’s conclusion. Mark your
calendars now for next year’s National Book Festival, scheduled for Aug. 24,
2024.”
EN: https://www.loc.gov/events/2023-national-book-festival/about-this-event/
Una lista completa de los autores que participaron en
el Festival Nacional del Libro de 2023
(FNL2023) puede verse EN: https://www.loc.gov/events/2023-national-book-festival/authors/
La serie que continuamos hoy se refiere a escritores de origen
latino que participaron en el FNL2023. Su objeto no consiste en realizar un
análisis de su obra, sino el de publicar material encontrado en Internet
relacionado con la misma y sus autores, para lo cual nos servirá de guía el
propio Website del FNL2023 en
inglés: https://www.loc.gov/events/2023-national-book-festival/about-this-event/
Los textos de Internet se transcribirán en itálicas, en español o
inglés, según sea el caso, con indicación de su fuente. Esta sexta entrega se
refiere la escritora R.J. Palacio (también: Raquel Jaramillo Palacio). Veamos:
R.J.
Palacio
https://www.loc.gov/events/2023-national-book-festival/authors/item/n2011062703/r-j-palacio/
R.J. Palacio is the author of the No. 1 New York Times
bestseller “Wonder,” which has sold over 15 million copies worldwide. The
book's message inspired the Choose Kind movement and has been embraced by
readers around the world, with the book published in over 50 languages.
“Wonder” was made into a blockbuster movie starring Julia Roberts, Owen Wilson,
and Jacob Tremblay. Palacio’s other acclaimed books include “365 Days of
Wonder: Mr. Browne’s Book of Precepts,” “Auggie & Me: Three Wonder
Stories,” “We’re All Wonders” and “Pony.” Palacio recently adapted her graphic
novel “White
Bird External” into a prose novel co-written with Erica S. Perl, which
will be featured at the 2023 National Book Festival.
Conferencia/Entrevista
en el FNL 2023
2023
National Book Festival: 'White Bird' in the Wonder Universe with R.J. Palacio
& Erica S. Perl
Video EN: https://www.loc.gov/events/2023-national-book-festival/schedule/item/webcast-11001/
R.J. Palacio: Hi, my name
is R. J. Palacio. That
stands for Raquel Jaramillo Palacio, which is my given name. In Colombia, which is where my parents are from, the
custom is to have two last names: your
father's last name and your mother's maiden name. So Gabriel Garcia Marquez for instance. Garcia was his father's last name, and Marquez was his
mother's, but since I grew up here in the United States in New York City, I
never did that. I only used my father's
last name, so I was always just Raquel Jaramillo, but when it came time to
publish Wonder, I thought it would be nice to honor my mother by using my full name, Raquel Jaramillo Palacio,
the way it was meant to be. The only
problem with that is that it seemed like a bit of a mouthful, so I shortened it
to our R. J. Palacio. I know my
mom would have liked that.
EN: https://www.teachingbooks.net/pronounce.cgi?pid=1487
Biografía:
In 2012, #1 New York Times bestselling
author R. J. Palacio became one of the most in-demand authors in children’s
literature after the release of her debut novel, Wonder. Praised by
the New
York Times as “rich and memorable,” the book was hailed as an
instant classic upon its publication and has maintained its popularity since
then. Wonder has
also been adapted into a film starring Julia Roberts, Owen Wilson, and Jacob
Tremblay, which was nominated for an Academy Award.
R. J. Palacio was an art director and graphic designer for more
than 20 years, while waiting for the perfect time to start writing her own
novel. When she had a chance encounter with an extraordinary child in front of
an ice cream store, she realized the time had come to tell Auggie’s story.
In the spring of
2012, Wonder inspired
a movement based on the importance of empathy and acceptance known as Choose Kind.
At ChooseKind.tumblr.com, users can pledge to choose
kind; watch the trailer
for Wonder;
download educational resources; and read
about Wonder and R.J.Palacio. The home page features a weekly spotlight
of a reader, classroom, or community that has responded to the story.
Wonder has been the recipient of numerous starred reviews,
awards, and accolades, including several “Best of 2012” lists. With over
700,000 copies of Wonder sold, R.J. Palacio continues to travel the
country speaking about the novel that has inspired countless children,
educators, and families. Over 100 schools and communities have chosen Wonder for
their One Book, One Read programs, including citywide reads in Santa Monica,
CA; Fairfield, CT; Memphis, TN; Naperville, IL; and others.
Her most recent
book, the graphic novel White Bird, brings the world of Wonder to a
new and thrilling format: the graphic novel.
EN: https://www.prhspeakers.com/speaker/r-j-palacio
For the Sake of
Honor: Raquel Jaramillo
By Tasha Graff ’07
for Bowdoin Magazine
EN: https://www.bowdoin.edu/news/2022/07/for-the-sake-of-honor-jaramillo.html
On May 28, for the first time in 217 Commencement
Ceremonies, the College presented all of this year’s honorary degrees to women
as part of its celebration of fifty years of women at the school.
Accomplished across all different fields, these five women inspire
not only with their achievements but also with their graciousness, generosity
of spirit, and grit. Accepting challenge after challenge, each called upon in
her own way to find courage and determination, they all remained, as writer
Kenny Moore once put it, “unharmed by victory.”
Raquel Jaramillo
Illustrator and best-selling author Raquel Jaramillo—R. J. Palacio to her readers—wrote a “little, quiet book” that launched a Choose Kind movement.
(Image on the right hand side)
Raquel Jaramillo P’18 is a writer, illustrator, and graphic designer who writes under the pen name R. J. Palacio. Her parents emigrated from Colombia to New York City, and Jaramillo was born in 1963 in Queens, where her parents raised her in a home surrounded by books.
Her mother, formerly part of a literary circle in Baranquilla, Colombia,
loved Latin American literature, but was particularly passionate about Oscar
Wilde and William Faulkner, and the bedtime stories she read to Jaramillo were
the short stories of Oscar Wilde and de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. Her father preferred
historical tomes: Marcus Aurelius, Pascal, and Will and Ariel Durant’s
eleven-volume Story of Civilization. The whole family
loved the epics so popular in the 1970s—Clavell’s Shogun, Michener’s Centennial, and the like.
Growing up in that environment, Jaramillo was destined to be a reader, and her
mother always told her she would be a writer.
Jaramillo went to elementary school in Flushing, at P.S. 22, and
graduated from the Manhattan High School of Art and Design in 1981. She earned
her BFA in illustration at the Parsons School of Design in 1985 and spent her
junior year studying at the American University of Paris in France. “I’d always
sort of toggled back and forth when I was in my late teens and early twenties
with ‘Do I want to make a living as a writer, or do I want to make a living as
an artist?’” she said. “Ultimately, I chose to make a living as a graphic
designer because I’m totally fine illustrating someone else’s stories, but I
didn’t want to ever have to be told what to write.”
After graduating from Parsons, Jaramillo began her career as a
freelance illustrator, publishing her artwork in The New York Times
Book Review and The Village Voice. She then took a job as an art assistant at
Scribner’s, which marked the beginning of a twenty-five-year career in
publishing. She left Scribner’s for Henry Holt, where in her seventeen years as
creative director she was responsible for an estimated one thousand books,
including the works of Paul Auster, Salman Rushdie, Louise Erdrich, Hilary
Mantel, and many others, before moving to the other side of the table to become
editorial director and creative director of children’s publishing at Workman
Publishing. Along the way, she illustrated classics like Peter Pan and The Night Before
Christmas and created board books like Dream, Baby, Dream.
While the world wouldn’t know Jaramillo as a writer until her
debut middle-grade novel, Wonder, was published (as R. J. Palacio—Palacio being her
mother’s maiden name) when she was forty-eight, she always wrote for herself.
When she was eight and in the third grade, her school newspaper published her
poem “The Winged Steed.” “I actually have been writing my whole adult life—bits
and pieces of novels, lots of stories, and mostly ideas for books,
screenplays,” said Palacio. “But I never carved out the time I needed to have
to follow through on these ideas. I’m so glad that I had all those years to
quietly hone the craft.”
The idea for Wonder, the story of ten-year-old Auggie Pullman, a boy with
a severe facial difference who attends school with other children for the first
time as a fifth grader after being homeschooled by his mom, came to Jaramillo
after an incident with her own children. “I was in front of an ice cream store
with my two sons, and my younger son, who was only three at the time, saw a
little girl that had a very significant craniofacial difference. He got a
little scared and he started to cry.” Jaramillo whisked her boys away quickly
so as not to upset the girl and her mother, but she could not stop thinking
about what the girl’s experience with the world must be and what Jaramillo
might have done differently—and compassionately—as a parent. She decided to
write.
Jaramillo’s only time to do that was in the middle of the night,
when her family was asleep. She began to write from midnight until three in the
morning and, after a year and a half, she had completed a draft of the novel
that would change her life. Wonder not only became an instant bestseller, it
also spawned an international Choose Kind movement, with school programs,
community reads, and other events that nurture respect, compassion, and
civility.
“I really had just set out to write a little book—a
quiet, simple book,” said Jaramillo. “There are no vampires or wizards. It’s
really just a book about kindness: the impact of kindness, the choice to be
kind.”….
Image…
Jaramillo believes in the importance of tackling difficult topics
in children’s literature. “Children understand and perceive everything,”
Jaramillo has said. She wants to use her books as a way to spark reflection and
conversation about serious topics and about things happening in the world,
whether directly to children or to children and adults they see in the news.
“In my mind, the willful ignorance of others is the
one thing writers and artists can actually address. Writers and artists can
make looking away from hard truths impossible.”
Her latest novel, Pony (2021), is her first book with characters set outside of the
Wonder universe, and Jaramillo describes it as a “big departure.” Set in
America of the mid-1800s, Pony is the story of Silas, a twelve-year-old boy on
a journey to rescue his father, with a ghost as his companion and a mysterious
pony as his guide. The action is gripping, even scary at times, and the book
tackles the very big subjects of love and grief. “As a parent,” Jaramillo said
in an interview, “I take my job as an author for children really seriously
because I know that they can’t read everything their kids read and they don’t
want their kids to be traumatized. But challenged is a different thing. A
little bit of pushing them to think in terms of the universe and mysteries and
accepting big, life things— that’s okay.”
More than a thousand classrooms are “certified kind” through the
Certified Kind Classroom Challenge, and Jaramillo has visited dozens and dozens
of them, giving talks and meeting with students and teachers. “I am so
impressed by the kids I meet in schools. I’m blown away by their beautiful
desire to do good,” Jaramillo said.
“I know that I’m only seeing one side of them during
these school visits, which are usually arranged after the kids have read
Wonder, so they’re perhaps more primed to act a certain way.”
But, she says, “I’ve always thought that most kids
are truly noble to their core and that, when given a chance—and a push—nobility
can manifest itself in the most surprising times and ways.”
…….
Reportajes/Entrevistas
How
One Unkind Moment Gave Way To 'Wonder'
SEPTEMBER 12, 2013 5:01 PM ET
HEARD ON ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
EN: https://www.npr.org/2013/09/12/221005752/how-one-unkind-moment-gave-way-to-wonder
In Wonder, R.J.
Palacio tells the story of Auggie, a tough, sweet, 10-year-old boy, who was
born with distorted facial features — a "craniofacial difference"
caused by an anomaly in his DNA.
Palacio tells NPR's Michele
Norris that the book was inspired by a real-life encounter with her own kids
six years ago. They were at an ice cream store and sat next to a little girl
with a severe facial deformity. Palacio's 3-year-old son cried in fear, so the
author grabbed her kids and fled. She was trying to protect the girl but also
avoid her own discomfort.
"I was really angry at
myself afterwards for the way I had responded," she admits. "What I
should have done is simply turned to the little girl and started up a conversation
and shown my kids that there was nothing to be afraid of. But instead what I
ended up doing was leaving the scene so quickly that I missed that opportunity
to turn the situation into a great teaching moment for my kids. And that got me
thinking a lot about what it must be like to ... have to face a world every day
that doesn't know how to face you back."…..
Image….
Palacio started writing the
book that night. She says Auggie's character came to her fully formed. The book
opens as he enters school and the story unfolds from several points of view —
we get the perspective of his sister, his parents, his best friends, the
do-gooders and the mean kids. One of Auggie's teacher challenges the kids:
"When given the choice between being right, or being kind, choose
kind."
And at the center of all these
stories is the same challenge Palacio faced back at the ice cream store: how to
confront the discomfort around difference; how to "choose kindness."
The book has made an impact. Wonder has been a best-seller, and the book has been embraced by towns, schools and the craniofacial community. The books has inspired readers to write songs, poems, chapters from different points of view; send cards; and even celebrate Auggie's birthday. Palacio is humbled by the reaction.
Interview Highlights
On how surprised she was by the movement Wonder sparked
Little did I know — I mean the
"choose kind" quote was not mine. It's one that I heard a couple
years ago, by [author and motivational speaker] Wayne Dyer, and I put it in
there because I think it's such a beautiful quote, and it's so true. And it's
something that really resonates with kids, because they kind of get it right
away. You know, sometimes because especially at that age, you're in an argument
with a friend and you know you're right, [but] you need reminding that
ultimately the important thing is to choose to be kind, not choose to be
right….
Image….
On Auggie's friend Summer
Summer is a character who is in
the fifth grade and befriends Auggie almost from the instant she meets him.
There's no one sitting with him at lunchtime, and she feels sorry for him. So
that's why she's motivated to sit down with him, but she soon realizes that
he's just a great kid, he's a fun kid, he's really funny. ... So she might've
felt sorry for him the first day, but after that she decides to sit down with
him at lunchtime — that's their little time together — because she really just
likes his company.
On the difference between Summer and Charlotte, another girl at the
school
So, Summer epitomizes that idea
of choosing to be kind. Charlotte, on the other hand, is a character who is
asked to befriend Auggie and she does, but in a very distant way. She never
really goes out of her way to be friends with Auggie. She's friendly enough,
but always kind of from a distance. She'll wave at him, she'll say "Hey
Auggie," she's not one of the kids that's mean to him, but she never
really pushes herself to do anything other than be friendly. So to me she kind
of symbolizes the whole notion of ... there's a difference between being nice
and choosing kind. ... I wish with all my heart that I could say that I would
have been like Summer but, if I'm completely honest, I would say I was probably
more like Charlotte when I was that age. I probably would have been nice — I
know I was never mean — but I don't think I went out of my way to be as kind as
I could have been.
On an email she got from a 91-year-old woman
She
wrote to say that, you know, she's had a wonderful life, but when she
read Wonder she
was reminded of something that had happened to her in a lunchroom when she was
13 years old, where some girls were somewhat cruel to her. I read it to kids
when I speak to them, because it reminds them just how much their actions are
remembered by people, and do you want to be remembered eight decades later by
someone for an act of unkindness or an act of kindness? Your actions are
remembered, and you have the power to not only make someone's day but to change
someone's life.
On how Wonder has unexpectedly made Palacio an advocate for children born with craniofacial differences
In a way it's a beautiful thing for me, because it seems like a chance for me to do over that one unfortunate situation that happened in front of the ice cream store. There's a certain act of atonement here, and the fact that maybe I'm helping this little girl, without her knowing, in some way because of Wonder — really, there's a nice little irony that is pretty special for me…..
Image….
Special thanks
to Mrs. Roth and Mr. Atwell's fifth-grade classes at Hyde-Addison Elementary
School in Washington, D.C., for helping us out this month.
‘Wonder’ author R.J. Palacio isn’t resting on 16 million
copies sold
By
https://nypost.com/2019/09/30/wonder-author-r-j-palacio-isnt-resting-on-16-million-copies-sold/
When R.J. Palacio’s book “Wonder” hit the
bestseller list soon after its release in 2012, the Park Slope-based writer
celebrated for an evening with her husband and two sons.
“That was my ‘Holy crap!’ moment. My son was
7 at the time, and he asked why I was so happy,” Palacio tells The Post. “It
was because my book had hit the bestseller list, and when it fell off the next
week, at least I could say I’d been a bestselling author for one week. For me,
it could not get better.”
If only she’d known. “Wonder” has remained a bestseller for the past seven years,
while selling more than 16 million copies and becoming a certified cultural
phenomenon.
Unless you write about a certain boy wizard
or you’re the Bible, it’s a nearly impossible feat to sell that many books
these days. But something connected about Palacio’s story about a disfigured
boy named Auggie trying to survive the fifth
grade. “ ‘Wonder’ came out when people wanted to hear more
about kindness,” Palacio says.
The book’s seed was planted by a real-life
incident in which the author’s then-3-year-old son got upset after seeing a
girl with a disfigured face at an ice cream parlor. And while the book is aimed
at young readers, it apparently has fans of all ages…..
Image….
“When my older
son started college, we met his roommate and his parents and we all had dinner
together,” the author says. “The mom asked what I did, and I said, ‘Oh, I wrote
a book called ‘Wonder.’ She said, ‘Wait! That’s you?!’ That’s the moment when I
realized that it had a readership beyond fifth-graders.”
Now Palacio is releasing a new graphic novel
— her first — tangentially connected to “Wonder” and its 2015 companion book,
“Auggie & Me: Three Wonder Stories.”
“White Bird: A Wonder Story” (Knopf Books for Young Readers, out
Oct. 1) begins with Julian, the bully from “Wonder,” FaceTiming his “Grandmère”
for help with a school project. Grandmère reluctantly reveals the story of her
time as a young Jewish girl in Nazi-occupied France during World War II and how
she was forced to hide in a barn for more than a year. Her only joy came from
the visits from a local boy crippled by polio.
Palacio grew up in Queens and was always
interested in art as well as writing.
“I realized early on that I could draw. If I
wanted to draw a horse, I could draw a horse. It’s kind of like a superpower,”
she says. “I loved my brother’s comic books but also Michelangelo. When I was 9
or 10, I’m sitting there copying Michelangelo.”
She attended Manhattan’s High School of Art
& Design before majoring in illustration at the Parsons School of Design.
Palacio later worked for a book publisher designing covers for Paul Auster,
Thomas Pynchon and many others. She only quit her day job three years after
“Wonder” came out.
“White Bird” took her two years to complete.
She illustrated the book on an iPad with a stylus (Kevin Czap inked it), and
Palacio spent more than a year coloring it herself. “I wanted to work with a
lot of light and shadow,” the author says. “There’s a lot of light and darkness
in people. I wanted to convey that graphically.”
Palacio was halfway through a new prose novel
but abandoned it after the 2016 election in favor of “White Bird,” which she
hopes is more subtly politically resonant.
“I wanted to be able to introduce the themes
of the Holocaust in an age-appropriate way, especially given the times we’re in
and the rhetoric that kids are exposed to every day,” she says. “They hear this
administration using words like bans and referring to people as infestations.
From the moment I heard these words, I was deeply troubled.”
Although “White Bird” takes place in the
“Wonder”-verse, no prior knowledge of the characters is necessary for new
readers.
Palacio has several ideas for new projects
and says this may be it for Auggie and his gang. “I’m ready to move on from the
world of ‘Wonder,’ ” she says.
The book has already brought her a new
career, international acclaim and something else.
Maravilla de RJ Palacio | Resumen, personajes y temas
Autor: Emily Rogers
Instructor: Vasos Shelley
The Book That Made R.J.
Palacio Cry on the Subway
Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” got to her: “Sure, it’s a novel full of unbelievable violence and apocalyptic nightmare stuff,” says the best-selling author of “Wonder,” “Pony” and “White Bird,” soon to be a feature film. “But the humanity and love is there right from the first line.”
EN: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/24/books/review/rj-palacio-interview.html
También puede verse:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/author-inspiration-book-meeting-auggie-pullman-life/story?id=51202406
https://bloomsite.wordpress.com/2013/11/06/qa-with-r-j-palacio/
https://sharpread.wordpress.com/2015/02/10/5-4-3-2-1-interview-rj-palacio/
https://randomactsofreading.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/wonder-author-r-j-palacio-joins-us/
https://thebooknooks.weebly.com/ashs-alcove/review-wonder-by-rj-palacio
https://burnighbright.blogspot.com/2016/12/book-review-wonder-by-rj-palacio-story.html
https://disabilityinkidlit.com/2018/01/19/review-wonder-by-r-j-palacio/
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_lecci%C3%B3n_de_August
https://montessoripiurablog.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/la-leccion-de-august-r-j-palacio.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._J._Palacio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io--Y-oym-A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmiJOiuC6uE
https://www.chipublib.org/blogs/post/author-of-the-month-r-j-palacio/
