Contact: Maridith Geuder
An award-winning Florida writer who authored "The Bossy Gallito," the retelling of a Cuban folktale, is the featured speaker Thursday [April 19] for Mississippi State's annual symposium on children's reading.
Lucia M. Gonzalez, program coordinator for the Miami-Dade Public Library and a children's author, shares her storytelling skills with teachers and with a number of area children, including 20 pre-schoolers.
Sponsored by the university's curriculum and instruction department, the event is designed to draw attention to the importance of reading and writing. This year's program also will highlight possible careers related to literacy and teaching.
Set in the Little Havana section of Miami, Gonzalez's tale involves a bossy rooster on his way to a family wedding. Her first published effort, it won the Pura Belpre Children's Literature Honor Medal of the American Library Association.
"The rhyming text provides children an opportunity to repeat phrases and participate in the experience of reading the book," said MSU education professor Nancy Verhoek-Miller, symposium coordinator.
Gonzalez's second book, "El Senor Cat's Romance," now is in its third printing. She currently is working on a book of scary stories set among the Hispanic cultures of the Caribbean basin.
For more information about the 2001 symposium, telephone Verhoek-Miller at (662) 325-3747.