Wednesday, November 29, 2023

Festival Nacional del Libro (6), Washington D.C. Escritores de origen latino: R.J. Palacio, Por Javier J. Jaspe

 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/

 Nombre:

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 Reed Tucker

EN: 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

EN: https://study-com.translate.goog/learn/lesson/wonder-r-j-palacio.html?_x_tr_sl=en&_x_tr_tl=es&_x_tr_hl=es&_x_tr_pto=rq#:~:text=The%20main%20plot%20of%20Wonder,is%20capable%20of%20being%20independent.

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://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/20/books/review/rj-palacio-and-meg-medina-talk-diversity-and-childrens-books.html

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.google.com/search?q=r.j.+palacio+writer&oq=r.j.+palacio+writer&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCTEyMjc4ajBqMagCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:7203e3c5,vid:uKKv0Msxcgc,st:0

https://www.chipublib.org/blogs/post/author-of-the-month-r-j-palacio/

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/interviews/article/86686-love-is-a-journey-without-end-close-up-on-r-j-palacio.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/rj-palacio-we-met-in-queens-as-kids-decades-later-we-reunited-as-authors-what-a-wonder/2019/07/26/7417169a-9dcc-11e9-b27f-ed2942f73d70_story.html

https://lelu-usa.com/blogs/oruguitas-blog/wonder-thoughts-on-the-spanish-translations-of-the-audiobook-and-movie

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