Bilingual English/Spanish. One night, young Amada overhears her parents whisper of moving from Mexico to the other side of the border- to Los Angeles, where greater opportunity awaits.
As she and her family make their journey north, Amada records her fears, hopes, and dreams for their lives in the United States in her diary. How can she leave her best friend behind? What if she can’t learn English? What if her family never returns to Mexico? From Juárez to Mexicali to Tijuana to Los Angeles, Amada learns that with her family’s love and her belief in herself, she can make any journey and weather any change–here, there, anywhere.
Amada Irma Pérez is a third-grade teacher in Oxnard, California, and a leading advocate of programs encouraging multicultural understanding. Like many of her students, Amada Irma was born in Mexico and came to the United States as a young child. My Very Own Room is based on her own family story. She lives with her family in Ventura, California.
Maya Gonzalez is an award-winning children’s book artist, author, activist and progressive educator. Their work addresses systemic inequity in relation to race/ethnicity, sexism, and cissexism using children’s books as radical agents of change and healing, both personally and culturally. Gonzalez co-founded Reflection Press, a POC, queer and trans owned independent publishing house that uses holistic, nature-based, and anti-oppression frameworks in their books and materials for kids and grown-ups. They are also the creator of the Gender Wheel, a tool to express the dynamic, infinite and inclusive reality of gender, and provides lectures and workshops to educators, parents and caregivers. Visit them online at mayagonzalez.com.
American Library Association (ALA)
Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs
"Told consistently through the eyes and feelings of a child, the narrative successfully telescopes the family odyssey. . . Any child who has moved away from a familiar neighborhood or a best friend will identify with Amada, but her story will especially resonate with immigrant kids."
* "Pérez captures the essence of the trauma of moving to a new place that is universal to all children, but here it is expanded by the facts of her immigrant experience. Gonzalez. . . packs her lively pages with vibrant, jewel-toned color and vivid images, illuminating the text and adding the richness of the culture. . . Pérez has plainly remembered her grandmother's advice: 'Keep your language and culture alive in your diary and in your heart.' Very nicely done."
"Breathtaking throughout are Gonzalez's illustrations, which blaze with color and capture both the hilariously mundane details of life, such as the antics of Amada's unruly brothers, and the imagination's terrain."
