Summers in Cuba, Finding Books Kids Like

Summers in Cuba (4:08) Childhood memories can be so vivid – a visit to grandma’s house, fishing with a cousin during summer vacation, maybe you actually roasted chestnuts on an open fire!   These experiences stay lodged in our minds our whole lives. Poet Margarita Engle knows this as well as anybody. She’s written a delightful picture book about her childhood visits with relatives every summer – in Havana! All the Way to Havana is the name of the book, and just to make sure the illustrator got things right, she sent him, an artist named Mike Curato, to stay with her relatives in Cuba, where he saw not only the city of Havana, but the countryside, too. Margarita Engle is the national Young People’s Poet Laureate, and, as a Cuban-American, is the first Latina to receive that honor. She’s a trained agronomist and botanist as well as a poet and novelist of award-winning books including The Surrender Tree, The Lightning Dreamer, Enchanted Air, and Drum Dream Girl. Finding Books Kids Like (14:50) Next Rachel talks with librarian Mark Pulham. They discuss the importance of helping children find books they’re actually going to stick with. How can we - as parents, teachers, and librarians – guide them to books and reading material with subjects that are of interest to them? Mark is a librarian and puppeteer at the Orem, Utah Public Library. He uses these talents, along with storytelling and acting, every year at the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival in Lehi, Utah. Mark Pulham is also co-author of Dressing the Naked Hand: The World’s Greatest Guide to Making, Staging, and Performing with Puppets. Shakespeare Reading (27:38) We finish up the show with William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 that focuses on his “not-so-perfect” girlfriend.” Classical 89 announcer, Solomon Reynolds, shares the sonnet with us.