The Stories I Read to the Children: The Life and Writing of Pura Belpré, the Legendary Storyteller, Children's Author and NY Public Librarian
This presentation of the library work and writing of Pura Belpré will likely be both frustrating and inspiring to librarians. Belpré's multifaceted work in pioneering library service to Spanish-speaking children is best known today through her appealing children's books, still widely used in library collections, and the ALA book award in her name honoring current Latino authors and illustrators of children's books. Sánchez González begins her tribute in scholarly discourse on Belpré's role, through her life and writing, in the Puerto Rican diaspora. The actual biographical material is fragmented with bits of general history, explanations, and suppositions. The academic analysis, followed by a small selection of photographs, leads to a welcome and substantial collection of Belpré's own writing: reprints of the texts of four picture books and 13 stories from The Tiger and the Rabbit, and Other Tales (Houghton Harcourt, 1965) and Once in Puerto Rico (Warne, 1973). Storytellers may especially like the next section of 15 unpublished stories. Finally, and perhaps the real heart of the volume, come a dozen apparently never published manuscripts of talks and essays in which Belpré discusses Puerto Rican folklore, writing for bilingual children, and a great deal of her own experience in storytelling and library work. Here the fine, rich view of decades of library service to culturally diverse children and the history of children's services set shining examples for today's librarians. Some readers may never get to this section. Many might be advised to start here.–Margaret Bush, Simmons College, Bostonα(c) Copyright 2013.  Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc.  No redistribution permitted.