Sujei Lugo Vázquez will blog with us in English, Spanish, and Spanglish

First of all, I want to extend my gratitude to Edi for inviting me (and Alia!), on this new blogging journey. We’ve known each other for years, we’ve worked together on many projects, and we’ve shared meals, dreams, frustrations, and possibilities together. When Edi approached me with the idea of providing guest posts focused on youth literature in Spanish (and related areas), of course I said yes.

 I remember that when I started working in libraries around 20 years ago, the reviewing journal Críticas was around featuring reviews of Spanish-language titles and publishing industry mainly for a US market and audience. Although their focus wasn’t necessarily youth literature the journal highlighted the importance of acknowledging, reviewing and supporting authors, illustrators and publishers creating titles in Spanish in and outside the United States. Críticas is no longer around, but we appreciated that of the main trade reviewing journals in the United States, School Library Journal is including more and more reviews, articles and book roundups of Spanish-language titles (original and translations). We also recognized the work of professional organizations like REFORMA, bloggers, social media accounts, and a community of educators, caregivers, youth literature creators that center, boost and champion for Spanish-language materials.      

There is a rich community, history, and legacy of children’s literature throughout the Américas, México ,and Colombia, where they have strived for decades in creating, printing, publishing and supporting the children’s book industry, not only from creators in their respective countries but from outside their geographical lines. Other countries also have different publishers (big and small) and a self-publishing market that has dedicated their work to create and support literature for youth. We are not minimizing the work for different publishers in the United States, Spain, and other countries, but we recognized that there has to be a bigger acknowledgement and support of publishers and creators from Spanish-speaking Latin America within the United States (the main audience of this virtual space). More and more educators, librarians, caregivers, community members and children’s literature creators ask for more children’s books in Spanish (I see it everyday at my workplace), want to learn more about books, publishers and creators, want to share ideas on how to incorporate and use books in Spanish in their classrooms, libraries, and communities. It’s an ambitious goal to use guest posts to assist in these needs presented by above, but let’s see how it goes and I will be grateful to those of you who would like to assist and accompany me on this journey. 

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