David Bowles: Latine Heritage Month in the Library
Latine Heritage Month is a time to pause and recognize the many contributions, needs, and expectations of people from throughout Latin America now residing in the United States. In our libraries, we might be developing displays and programs centering Latine culture. We may take the time to expand our own reading habits, intentionally including works by authors from Caribbean, Central, or South American countries. We’re probably also considering how newly arrived, first, second or third generation Latine Americans use our library: what books, services, and materials we should be providing, whether in English, Spanish, or Creole.
How welcoming and nurturing are our spaces?
I recently asked a few Latine Americans who are connected to youth literature to write about their first experience in libraries. Could they remember getting that first library card? That one librarian who assisted them in some special way? Or that book they found on the shelf that was just magic? What could they tell us about their experience in library spaces?
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Author, scholar, and editor David Bowles has a very vivid memory of how libraries were a lifeline for him as a child. He reminds me how special being a librarian can be to all the members of my community, and how special all the children in our librarians are.
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Libraries have always been a centerpiece of my life, especially during my childhood and adolescence, when they served as a unique vessel that could both transport me to other realms and provide shelter from the storms of life.
My earliest memory of a library is from 1975. My father was in the Navy, and we were living in military housing in Corpus Christi. When September rolled around, I got really excited, because it was time for me to attend kindergarten. Since I had learned to read before school started, I was dismayed on the first day of class to discover that most other kids didn’t have that ability. In fact, the teacher was going to first teach us the alphabet, letter by letter. I was having none of that. I told my mother I wouldn’t go back. I had been looking forward to reading more books, not waiting around for others to catch up.
So my mother, in perhaps the smartest move she ever made, pulled me from school and began to take me to La Retama Public Library every day. There, with her guidance and that of the librarian in the Children’s Department, I dove into the stacks, expanded my reading from picture books to chapter books by the end of the school year.

Looking back, it was the most formative nine months of my entire life. My father was suddenly stationed at Parris Island, South Carolina, and our little Mexican American family soon found itself uprooted from South Texas soil and replanted in the rich loam of the Lowcountry, first in Goose Creek and later Beaufort. When I enrolled in first grade—not optional like kindergarten—a reading assessment showed that I was at the third-grade level. As a result, I spent part of my days ignoring the sulky stares of older kids who were dubious about the presence of this six-year-old bookworm.
There was some light bullying as a result (also from kids in my homeroom), but ironically, my answer was to spend my free time in the school library, where the kind librarian took me under her wing and guided me from my love of folklore into action and genre books before finally introducing me to some of the classics. She would be the first of a long line of school librarians to mentor and protect me.
By the time I was in third grade at a different school, I was reading at a junior-high level. And not long after my family moved back to their hometown of McAllen, Texas, I was reading books intended for college students and other adults. My summers were spent in the McAllen Public Library, until my father abandoned the family, forcing us into government housing in the neighboring town of Pharr. Brokenhearted and deeply depressed, I nonetheless found surcease in both the Pharr Public and the PSJA High School Libraries, into which I often ducked with my fellow bookworms Ranulfo and Gustavo to escape wannabe gangsters and other bullies.
It was Mrs. Márquez and Sister Rose—the librarians at PSJA High School—who answered our complaint about the lack of Mexican American authors on the shelves with a suggestion:
“Perhaps you could author titles that would fill those gaps, boys.”
Years later, primed by the thousands of books that caring librarians had led me to read, I began to write.
I haven’t stopped since.

David Bowles is a Mexican American author and translator from south Texas, where he works as an associate professor, coordinating the English Education Program at the University of Texas Río Grande Valley. Among his three dozen books are the multiple-award-winning They Call Me Güero and its companion They Call Her Fregona (Kokila), as well as My Two Border Towns (Kokila), Ancient Night (Levine Querido), Secret of the Moon Conch (Bloomsbury), The Prince & the Coyote (Levine Querido) and Hearts of Fire and Snow, co-authored by Guadalupe Garcia McCall (Bloomsbury).
David has worked on several TV/film projects, including Victor and Valentino (Cartoon Network), the Moctezuma & Cortés miniseries (Amazon/Amblin) and Monsters and Mysteries in America (Discovery). In 2017, he was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters. David began serving as its president in April of 2024. In 2019, he co-founded the hashtag and activist movement #DignidadLiteraria, which has negotiated greater Latinx representation in publishing. In 2021, he helped launch Chispa, the Latinx imprint of Scout Comics, for which he serves as editor-in-chief.
Follow him on most social media platforms: @DavidOBowles
Filed under: Creators, Uncategorized

About Edith Campbell
Edith Campbell is Librarian in the Cunningham Memorial Library at Indiana State University. She is a member of WeAreKidlit Collective, and Black Cotton Reviewers. Edith has served on selection committees for the YALSA Printz Award, ALSC Sibert Informational Text Award, ALAN Walden Book Award, the Walter Award, ALSC Legacy Award, and ALAN Nielsen Donelson Award. She is currently a member of ALA, BCALA, NCTE NCTE/ALAN, REFORMA, YALSA and ALSC. Edith has blogged to promote literacy and social justice in young adult literature at Cotton Quilt Edi since 2006. She is a mother, grandmother, gardener and quilter.
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