Today’s poetry collection is another nonfiction collection, but it definitely stands out from the crowd.  With an award winning author AND an award winning illustrator, about an equally important topic, this book is a stunning piece of art.

“Bravo! Poems About Amazing Hispanics” by Margarita Engle and illustrated by Rafael Lopez is astonishing in its simplicity, but even more so in the fact that it has never been done before.  While Margarita has a preface that says that the people in the book aren’t necessarily historically important, it feels like every single one of them are.  She also has a poetic afterword naming many other amazing hispanics that weren’t included in the book (for the brevity of format) but are equally amazing.  This is a book that again moved me to tears because of the bravery (in some cases), independence or significance of the biographies that were included.  I found myself astonished time and time again that I hadn’t heard some of these names before.

Not only did I have to share today’s biography (as it’s so easy to forget that it wasn’t just white men that founded our country!), but I had to share the nonfiction back matter too.  (But it was hard for me to choose which ones to share here too–so definitely go read the book!)