Margarita Engle Facts On The Award Winning Poet For Young Readers

Margarita Engle is the writer of ‘The Surrender Tree’, ‘The Poet Slave of Cuba’, ‘The Firefly Letters’, a ‘Newbery Honor Book’, ‘Hurricane Dancers’, and ‘Tropical Secrets’, among other books for children, young people, and adults.Engle teaches agronomy at California State Polytechnic University and resides in central California. She wrote poetry when she was a kid. With Naomi Shihab Nye and Jacqueline Woodson, Margarita co-curated the Poetry Foundation’s first-ever young readers’ edition of ‘Poetic Magazine’.Her work, ‘The Firefly Letters,’ was named a Pura Belpré Honor Book, won a California Book Award and was a Jane Addams Award finalist. ‘Hurricane Dancer: The First Caribbean Pirate Shipwreck’ is Engle’s latest book for young adults. ‘Dancing Hands,’ ‘Drum Dream Girl,’ and ‘The Flying Girl’ are just a few of the picture books she has written.If you want to learn more amazing facts about this wonderful author, poet, and speaker, all you have to do is read on, and do not forget to share this with your friends and fellow poetry lovers! You can also look at our other fun facts articles on how long clones live and who carved Mount Rushmore!Life Of Margarita Engle: Birth, Location, FamilyMargarita Engle was born in Pasadena, California, on September 2, 1951, to an American father and a Cuban mother.She holds a bachelor’s degree in biology at California State Polytechnic University, a master’s degree from Iowa State University, and a doctorate from the University of California, Riverside. As a young child, Margarita Engle was enamored with writing and reading. Engle lived her childhood summers in Cuba. She formed a strong link with her wider family and established a lifelong passion for subtropical nature, leading her to pursue degrees in agriculture, botany, and creative writing.To return to the United States, Engle and her family had to overcome several challenges. These circumstances severely limited contact with her family, and she characterizes the pain of losing the connection with her beloved extended family and grandma as science fiction. Nevertheless, Engle takes pleasure in assisting her husband in their volunteer work with Wilderness Search and Rescue’s canine training programs.Engle began reading about Cuban history, which led her to uncover several individuals and events that would later appear in her award-winning novels written for contemporary adults. ‘The Surrender Tree’ won the first Newbery Honor award, and ‘The Poet Slave of Cuba’ (A Biography by Juan Francisco Manzano) won the Pura Belpré Medal, Américas Award, as well as an International Reading Association Award, in addition to ‘Tropical Secrets’ (Holocaust Refugees), which won the Paterson Prize.Famous Poems Of Margarita Engle’Your Heart’, ‘A Dog Named Haiku’, ‘My Sky’, ‘Drum Dream Girl: How One Girl’s Courage Changed Music’, ‘When You Wander’, ‘Mountain Dog’, and ‘Summer Birds: The Butterflies of Maria Merian’ are among Engle’s many children’s novels.She’s also the author of the books ‘Singing to Cuba’ and ‘Skywriting: A Novel of Cuba’, and many young adult novels in verse, such as ‘The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom’ (for young adults), which got a Newbery Honor as well as a Pura Belpré Award, and ‘The Poet Slave of Cuba: A Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano’. ‘Tropical Secret’ gained a Sydney Taylor Award for Youth Readers as well as a Paterson Prize. Though her books have won some accolades, and her children’s books are prized to date, it is her poetry that is said to have a hard-hitting effect on adults and younger readers alike.What does Margarita Engle think about poetry?Margarita Engle said that writing a historical novel with poetry feels like time travel, a dreamy blend of fantasy and fact. She believes it’s an investigation.‘I enjoy writing on young people who make hopeful decisions in seemingly hopeless situations. My personal goal is that stories of bravery and compassion will resonate with youthful readers as they face difficult choices in today’s world’, said Margarita Engle. When she was very young, she started writing poetry and children’s book. Awards Won By Margarita EngleMargarita Engle is an award-winning author and writer whose free verse books have created fascinating and often forgotten history characters. Margarita talks about her childhood memories in Cuba and how her search for her roots brought about these unforgettable heroes and heroines.She has won the Jane Addams Award, the San Diego Book Award, the Claudia Lewis Poetry Award, the NSK Neustadt Prize for Literature of Children, and been a CINTAS fellow. ‘For more than 30 years, official US government travel bans made [travel to Cuba] extremely difficult, so I used my fantasy, remembering childhood visits, and beginning to wonder about the individual I would have been if that right to return back and forth openly had not been stripped away from me by a historic context,’ she asserts of the influence Cuba has had on her written form.For ‘The Poetry Slave of Cuba’, Margarita Engle received the San Diego Book Award, the Americas Award, the Willow Review Poetry Award, the Pura Belpré Award, the Consortium of Latin American Studies Institutes, the International Reading Association Children’s Book Award, as well as the Teachers’ Choice Award. She also got Reader’s Choice A. ML Georgia Children’s Book Award.Margarita Engle wrote ‘Turtle Came To See Me’ for a reason. Engle Margarita stated, ‘This poem piqued my interest at first because turtles are my favorite animals! As I read a poem, it does not appear to be heavily centered on a turtle. The picture of the turtle I was searching for only appeared once. I discovered that this poetry had nothing to do with turtles.‘Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly facts for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our article on Margarita Engle, then why not look at our facts about animals that live in Death Valley or Viking weapons facts!Main image by Jeffrey Beall.