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Swiacki Children's Literature Festival: Erin Entrada Kelly & Raúl the Third

Teacher resources collected on Authors and Illustrators that have attended the festival

Biographies

Erin Entrada Kelly
Erin Entrada Kelly received the 2018 Newbery Medal for Hello, Universe, a 2021 Newbery Honor for We Dream of Space, the 2017 APALA Award for The Land of Forgotten Girls, and the 2016 SCBWI Golden Kite Honor award for Blackbird Fly, among other honors. Her novels are New York Times bestsellers and have been translated in more than thirty languages. Erin also writes and illustrates the Maybe Maybe Marisol Rainey series for  younger readers.

Erin is Filipina-American. She grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana and earned her bachelor’s degree from McNeese State University and an MFA in creative writing from Rosemont College, where she works as a thesis advisor. She is also on the faculty of Hamline University’s MFAC program and the Gotham Writers Workshop.

Today, Erin lives in New Castle County, Delaware, with her family, which includes two dogs and one hedgehog.

Raul The Third

Raúl the Third is a New York Times bestselling and three-time Pura Belpré award-winning illustrator, author, and artist living in Boston. ¡Vamos! Let’s Cross the Bridge was awarded one of the year’s Best Illustrated Children’s Books of 2021 from The New York Times and the New York Public Library. He is currently adapting his World of ¡Vamos! books into an animated television series with Silvergate Media and Mercury Filmworks. His work centers around the contemporary Mexican-American experience and his memories of growing up in El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

As a boy in El Paso, Raúl loved reading comics. On Sundays, when his father sent him to buy the El Paso Times at the 7-Eleven, Raúl would head right for the spinner racks and thumb through the Ralph Snart Adventures and Bucky O’Hare. At fifteen, Raúl got a job at Bill’s Coins, Cards, Stamps & Comics. He spent hours on his knees flipping through the stacks, devouring the art of Chester Brown, George Herriman, Robert Crumb, and Wendy and Richard Pini. Raúl was a huge fan of Lowrider magazine, especially the fan art most often created with BIC pens, which became (and still is) his tool of choice.

Raúl’s first authorial project, ¡Vamos! Let’s Go to the Market (self-illustrated with coloring by Elaine Bay), received a Pura Belpré honor by the American Library Association and Reforma. Both of his titles ¡Vamos! Let’s Go Eat and Lowriders to the Center of the Earth were selected for Pura Belpré awards for illustration.

Raúl recently collaborated with author. Jason Reynolds on Stuntboy, in the Meantime
from Simon and Schuster.

Erin Entrada Kelly's Work

Raúl the Third's Work