>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. ^M00:00:03 [ Silence ] ^M00:00:22 >> Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the Library of Congress. I'm John Cole. I'm the director of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. And I'm speaking -- we're having a double welcome today from the Center for the Book, and Georgette Dorn, who is the division director for the Hispanic Division, and also the acting director of the European Division. And on both of our behalves, we want to say one more time that we're so pleased that the Library of Congress can be the host for the Americas Awards. We've been doing it for a number of years, long enough to see a change actually in some of the leadership in the program. And it's all been a very positive experience for those of us at the Library. Very briefly, I will say a word about the Center for the Book, and in particular about our Young Readers Center, which I think several of you may have visited today. We have quite a wonderful extravaganza, which you will learn about as the day progresses, taking full advantage of the authorship, the illustrations, and the wonderful work that results from the winners of the Americas Awards. The Young Readers Center, which I hope several of you have visited and seen, it was created in 2009 by Dr. James Billington, who is the librarian of Congress. It's the first place in the Library that really aims at addressing the reading interest of kids 16 and under. And the only real requirement is that they be accompanied by an adult, and under the leadership of Karen Jaffe, for whom I'm speaking today as well, we -- and she is not able to be here this afternoon. We want to talk about how important that part of the activity of reading for young people is, and how we're pleased the Young Readers Center today really has had its inauguration as part of the event. And that was through, as you know, a special exhibit of the illustrations which have been provided for us by Susan Roth, and you will learn more about that book and about the situation a little later. So welcome on behalf of the Center for the Book, and I'd like to have Georgette say a few words. Let's give Georgette Dorn a hand. ^M00:03:01 [ Applause ] ^M00:03:05 >> Well, thank you, John. ^M00:03:06 [ Silence ] ^M00:03:10 It is a great pleasure to welcome you on behalf of the Hispanic Division. And it's such a wonderful event. We always look forward to it. This year in October the Hispanic Division celebrates its 75th anniversary. And I hope you have time to visit the Reading Room if you're here, not before 5 at all. It's in the Jefferson Building, and welcomes scholars, students, children from all over the world to study Latin America, Spain, Portugal, and US Hispanics. It is, again, a great pleasure to welcome you once again to the Americas Award. I always buy 2 or 3 books for my children's children, and it's really wonderful, it's a great event. And I turn it over now to Denise Woldering [assumed spelling], one of our cosponsors. Thank you. ^M00:03:53 [ Silence ] ^M00:03:58 >> Well, thank you, John and Georgette, thank you so much. Good afternoon, and welcome to the 2014 Americas Award. I thought I would just introduce to you what CLASP is, CLASP, the Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs sponsors the Americas Award, and it's one of our most important projects. CLASP consists of over 70 member institutions, universities with Centers for Latin American Studies. And we form a committee every year that consists of educators, librarians, people who use -- actively engage with children's literature to form the committee, and we really look -- the award is really to engagingly portray Latin America. The awards are also given to books that are used in the classroom. So that's really an interesting distinction from other awards. And we're very happy to celebrate this year's award. So additional financial support for this year's award is for Lee & Low Books, Florida International University, the Ohio State University, Tulane University, University of Florida, University of New Mexico, Stanford University, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and Vanderbilt University. So that's a handful of some of the universities that are taking part in this award. And I would like to also make another distinction that this award honors commended titles, so there's up to 2 awards given each year. And this year we had 2 honor books, and you'll see here on -- behind me the images from all of our books. We also come up with a list of commended titles, which is a great resource for librarians and teachers. This year's honor book, 2 honor books are "Diego Rivera: An Artist for the People," by Susan Goldman Rubin. Our committee loved the way that Susan was able to portray Diego Rivera as an artist. And the other honor book was for Duncan Tonatiuh's "Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote." And I'd like to honor Duncan here, who might like to come up and share a couple words with us. ^M00:06:11 [ Applause ] ^M00:06:16 [ Silence ] ^M00:06:21 >> Hi. Well, I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you to the committee for honoring "Poncho Rabbit." It's a book that I'm very proud of. It's, you know, a book that talks about immigration, and there's an estimated 1.5 million undocumented children in the US, an estimated 5.5 million children of undocumented parents in the US. So it's -- you know, there's a lot of kids who can relate to Poncho's story, and who have lived Poncho's story. And I'm just happy that the book is being supported and recognized, and I hope that it can be a tool in schools to talk about this important issue, that it can help kids that have this experience or know this world see that -- see themselves reflected and know that their stories are important, and for kids that -- for students that don't have this experience hopefully the book can create empathy and understanding. So thank you very much. ^M00:07:33 [Applause] ^M00:07:36 >> Thank you. I also just wanted to take a moment. You'll see -- at the end of this presentation you'll see some of the members from the committee, 2014 Award Committee, and I'd also like to introduce a few of them here. We have Barbara D'Ambrosio [assumed spelling], who served on it last year, and will also be serving again for the 2015 year. We're also very excited to have other committee members here, which is Maria Sheldon from the University of -- or from New Mexico, ^M00:08:05 [applause] ^M00:08:08 and Laura Kleinman here from the Oyster Bilingual School, ^M00:08:11 [silence] ^M00:08:14 and Denise Croker [assumed spelling] in the back from Nashville. ^M00:08:17 [Applause] ^M00:08:20 We also have 2 class members who will be looking at engaging content about the Americas Award in their respective regions. So we have Molly from Stanford University, ^M00:08:31 [applause] ^M00:08:34 and Janelle from Ohio State University. ^M00:08:36 [Applause] ^M00:08:38 So as I mentioned, the real wonderful thing about the Americas Award is curricular development, the ways that teachers, families use and interact with the award. So our center's really tried to create content. There are many wonderful curricular resources on all of these books, and so if you go to our website, which is at the end here, classprograms.org/americasaward, you will see all of those resources for your classroom. And if you have others that you'd like to share, please send them our way to Facebook. So without further adieu, I'd like to introduce Barbara D'Ambosio. ^M00:09:18 [Applause] ^M00:09:21 >> Good afternoon. I want to thank everybody for coming this afternoon. It's certainly a treat to see a diverse bunch of people show up for this. It's my privilege to speak today about the winner of the Americas Award, and the 2 lovely ladies who are responsible for its creation, Susan L. Roth, and Cindy -- sorry, Trumbore. Yes. The book was published by Lee & Low. This is no ordinary book. And you can tell it from the moment you set eyes on it. Number one, there's no title on the cover. And then when you open it up, you're a bit disoriented because it's not read horizontally, but rather vertically. And this serves a wonderful purpose, given that this book is all about parrots so that when you open the book your eyes draw in upward toward either the canopy where the birds are perched, or else to the sky where they happen to be flying around. These little parrots are just beguiling. Susan made them from fabric and paper. And I would encourage you all to go to the Young Readers Room at some point because her art is displayed up there. The original artwork is on display through November. Yes. Much of the text, like the illustration, is kind of 2-part so that on the one hand we have a story about the parrot, the history of the parrot, the Puerto Rican parrot. And then below that we have something about the history of Puerto Rico, the people there, the people since from Pre-Columbian times to the present. And intermingled among this is the story of the parrot's fate; because although at one time these parrots numbered in the hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, they were on the verge of extinction. By 1975 there were only something like 18 parrots -- 18 of them left. And so this story, as well as telling the history of the parrot, tells about its almost demise and the work of the Puerto Rican parrot project to restore these parrot populations. So it's not just a book about parrots. We learn about the interplay of man and bird, the effects that man has, for good or not, on native species. And we also learn the history of Puerto Rico, a kind of a basic introduction from Pre-Columbian to present day. Following the story there are lots and lots of facts about the Puerto Rican parrot, as well as about the Puerto Rican Recovery Program, and the important dates in parrot history and Puerto Rican history, as well as a biography -- bibliography; I'm sorry. So [laughs] this book lends itself very much indeed to classroom use, whether kids are studying ecology, where they can see the direction of man and animals, the history and geography of Puerto Rico, and finally the art serves as inspiration for children that want to work on multimedia projects, or on composition. So it's my great pleasure to introduce to you the creators of this book, Cindy Trumbore and Susan Roth. ^M00:12:54 [ Applause ] ^M00:13:00 [ Silence ] ^M00:13:09 >> Good so far. >> Yes. >> All right; thank you. [Laughter] All right. Thank you very much, Barbara and committee, for giving Susan and me the 2014 Americas Award, to Denise for coordinating the award, along with your group, to Catalina and other members of the Library of Congress's Hispanic Division for this lovely event, and to the Center of the Book. Susan and I are highly, highly honored to receive this award. When Susan and I begin to write a nonfiction book, our number one priority is to get the facts straight. That can mean intensive text and photo research, interviews and onsite trips, close work with consultants, and in the case of "Parrots Over Puerto Rico," all of these things. Here we are with our raincoats in 2012 at El Yunque National Forest, where it rained every 45 minutes. So to receive an award that says that our portrayal of Puerto Rico was both engaging and authentic, and that it helps children to reach beyond geographical borders, tells us that we did our job right. Today we'd like to each tell you a bit more about how we came to write and illustrate this book, always with that focus on getting facts right. Oh, went the wrong way. ^M00:14:36 [ Silence ] ^M00:14:41 I may need a techie. [Laughter] Denise, would that be you? [Laughs] >> I think the arrow was -- the arrow, yes. >> This one; the right arrow. >> Yes. >> Okay; thank you. This is where the book started, with a quarter. This image is over the entrance to El Portal, which is the El Yunque Rainforest Visitors Center. In 2012 I read an article in my local newspaper about the newest national forest quarter, which featured El Yunque. And this article had a boxed feature about the Puerto Rican parrot. Susan and I had already published our first nonfiction book together. We were looking for a new idea, and we just dove right into this one. Puerto Rican parrots caught our interest right away. They are the comeback kids. As Barbara told you, they came from a -- they went from a population of hundreds of thousands to a flock of 24 in 1967. We all know the happy ending, thanks to the work of the Puerto Rican Parrot Recovery Program. There are about 500 Puerto Rican parrots alive today. The last breeding season broke all records for chicks, and in August 2 chicks hatched in a natural nest for the first time in decades. And these birds have a lot of personality. I brought you my little stuffed iguaca. And this is its famous caw, [parrot sounds]. [Laughter] Shh. [Laughter] When I started researching the text, I thought it would tell the history of Puerto Rican parrots. But as I read the history of the birds, as Barbara also told you, I realized how closely intertwined it was with the history of Puerto Rico's people. And once I started looking for parallels, I found them everywhere. Together the birds and the people searched for food, they braved hurricanes, they fought off invaders. There was one part of the story that was especially difficult to tell, and it was the time from 1898 after the Spanish-American War ended, to 1952, when Puerto Rico became a US commonwealth. How do you define a commonwealth in words that a child can understand? Puerto Rico and the US have been trying to work that out since 1952. [Laughter] So finally I said what a commonwealth is not. It is not a state. It is not an independent nation. It is something in-between. And my consultants like that; they agreed that that was a good definition. Even for this time period I found an eerie parallel between Puerto Rico's humans and their birds. As the parrots faced attacks from pearly-eyed thrashers, which you can see at the top of the image here, trying to steal their territory, they too were having a crisis over defining their turf. When I had a first draft that I liked, I shared it with Susan, and the fun part of collaboration began. And we banged the manuscript back and forth, draft after draft, with the help of Louise May, our Lee & Low editor who's here today. I think we had 14 drafts, Louise, but -- >> Sounds about right. >> Yes. [Laughter] And all this time Susan was thinking about the art. A nonfiction book tries to recreate some sort of reality. And of course many nonfiction books are illustrated with photographs. But we wanted to go beyond photos. Susan's collages, as you can see here, are made of paper, fabric, and this kind of globby, funny Japanese glue that only Susan knows about. >> Yes. [Laughter] >> Using these things, and the collage medium, we can show children the relationship between ideas, and we think that's very important for children growing up in a global society. It was Susan's idea to give the book a vertical orientation. It perfectly captured our vision of the book, which originally had the title, "In the Treetops and Down Below." Louise didn't like it so we changed it. [Laughter] So without losing authenticity we could tell the 2 stories using Susan's collage medium. Up until the spread that you see on the right here, Susan kept the birds and the human stories separate in the artwork. But now we see humans literally reaching up and touching the parrot's nest. You can see it in the historical photo on the left. And from this point to the end of the book, the text and art just tell one story, the story of the Puerto Rican Parrot Recovery Program. Here are 2 [laughter] real-life heroes of that story. They are 2 of the scientists who run the Puerto Rican Parrot Aviaries. The guy on the left, Ricardo Valentine, was one of our consultants. He is the major reason why Susan and I are here today. He reviewed the text for accuracy, he gave us the photos for Susan's visual research for the back of the book, he allowed us to interview him, and he showed us real Puerto Rican parrots, which Susan will talk about in -- very soon. I will leave you with this thought, "Keep calm and save iguacas. Another reason Susan and I are really thrilled to have this recognition for the book is that it lifts recognition of the Puerto Rican parrot, and the recovery program. We're very excited about that, and it's very hard to stay calm when we are so happy to be here today. [Laughter] Thank you. ^M00:19:55 [ Applause ] ^M00:20:01 [ Background Conversation ] ^M00:20:35 >> Sometimes when reviewers are being kind to me, and to my collage medium, they say the images look as if they could fly off the page. These are very kind words for bird books. Today, though, I'd like to share a little of the reverse. I'd like to show you with a few fast pictures exactly how the images flew onto the page. Just a second. First, they flew into my head. As you know already, Cindy and I decided on the text, we went through scores of photographs, we went through wildlife books, and encyclopedias, and bird books, and nature books, and history books, and ecology books, and then we went to Puerto Rico. The first parrot I saw in Puerto Rico was the day I met Ricardo Valentine, the one you've already met, the director of one of the parrot conservation groups. He wanted to give us a treat. We arrived at the open door of his office, and there he was with a real parrot on his shoulder in all the blue-green glory without a leash. Cindy walked right in, but I hesitated because I could tell right away it wasn't a live parrot. [Laughter] It was a Hispaniola parrot, one of the tamer, not endangered look-alike cousins, the kind that you use to teach the ways of the world to the captive bread, blue-blooded Puerto Rican real parrots. This guy was just sitting on Ricardo's shoulder minding his own business, so I grew bolder and I stepped right into the room. And then it lifted its wing, and I shrieked. [Laughter] And Ricardo laughed and Cindy was mortified. But I'm a city bird. I like my feathered friends, in cages, doors locked. Ricardo talked to the parrot and it calmed down. And finally so did I after he put it back in the cage and the door was locked. But even though I was afraid of it, I noticed how beautiful it was. And this was just a cousin of the genuine article. This was not the first time that I visited Puerto Rico, nor was it my first book about Puerto Rico. It was my third visit to the beautiful island, so near and yet so far in so many ways. My first trip was in December, a long time ago. I grew up in California. I already knew that there were places in God's green Americas that didn't have white Christmases. But where's that world, nope. But I remember being amused that they were selling little evergreen trees in the market at Christmastime there. And they must have been the only trees that weren't available for looking in the rainforest. I came home and I wrote "Another Christmas," a story about a family from Wisconsin going to Puerto Rico to celebrate Christmas. My research for that book included visiting a friend here in Washington, who shared her stories and her traditions with me. And I learned about the importance of the 3 wise men in Puerto Rico. My friend, by the way, also gave me a tape -- that's how long ago it was, a tape, [laughter] of Puerto Rican Christmas music. It's funny, because now that I live in New York City I hear those Puerto Rican songs all over the place at Christmas. New York is very Puerto Rican. The sounds and colors of Puerto Rico never left my head. The next time I went there, a friend invited our whole family to stay in her beach condo for a week. That time besides going to a rainforest, the rainforest came to us. There was a huge hurricane, and we watched it from the dry side of a picture window 15 floors up. And I saw those palm trees bent all the way down to the ground as the winds blew, and blew, and blew. And then the storm passed and it was sunny and beautiful again. And we all went to eat mafongo on the beach. And that hurricane stayed tucked in my head too. Now, my studio looks always as if a hurricane just passed through it. [Laughter] So it really wasn't such a stretch after all that, making the collages of the hurricanes in this book. [Laughter] It's a hurricane. And then came this trip. Cindy and I did it all, from beaches, to rainforests, to pastel city streets, to double-flying flags all over the state buildings. We did the museums, and the fort, and we met welcoming people. And it's funny that non-statehood Puerto Rico. It's home, but it's an exotic place. It's not exactly home, it's exotic made accessible. After our trip, back here again I was finally ready to start -- oh it's still a mess. Now I'm ready to start, with usual, the sloppiest little sketch dummy in the world. And then I choose my papers. And then I get my scissors and tweezers ready to start cutting, and cutting feathers, and feet, and more feet, [laughter] and eyeballs. Those are all eyeballs. And they were not even half enough; and more feet, and parrot shapes, and more parrot shapes, and more parrot shapes, and that glue picture. Is that the same one? I think it is; the best glue in the world. It's called "Nori," and it's Japanese. And it's not so easy to get anymore. You have to be creative about it. There were tail feathers, and wing feathers, dots for noses, and finally there was one parrot. And then there were 2 parrots. And then there were 3 parrots. [Laughter] And flocks, and always more, and still more parrots. Lots of parrots, and some have to sit in the branches. There was no more room in the sky. And there they were. And then there were people; some big, and some small. I always tell the kids, by the way, that, you know, "They're only one-sided. If you turn them over, they're quite naked these people." [Laughter] And then some big and small. And this is how the pictures grew, and this is how they were glued. Lots of pictures. And they were full of wet glue, because by the end there were layers and layers of background papers that all held the parrots, but they were quite ripply. I tried everything to straighten out these pages. For days I had everything sitting underneath quite a bunch of contraptions in my studio. I stacked the art under multiple variations of 2 upside down tables, with 3/4 of my entire library piled on top for weight, trying desperately to flatten the pages in time for scanning. Every feather, every beak, every red spot, every eyeball, were all stuck on top of those curling unruly pages, until finally when they were pretty dry and pretty flat, I spread them out and lined them up to test the rhythm and flow of the sequencing of the book. As I worked, I photographed the pages with my cell phone, and sent them to my artist illustrator friend, Nancy Pats [assumed spelling], the one who gives the first critiques on all my work. She's my loyal, patient, and pretty gentle, but always truth-telling first responder. And I'm happy to tell you that she's here today. I was so close to this project, working on it so intensely all by myself, that as always I desperately needed some critical eyes to share the first impressions, and to give educated advice. But as the mother of all these pages, I wasn't so anxious to hear that my children were funny-looking, or worse, that they were wrong for the book. So it was only after Nancy's gentle, but truthful initial, "Okay" that I dared to send them onto Cindy for a look. I needed to be ready to hear the ideas that sometimes did not exactly match my own first tries. Cindy always did have constructive, thoughtful, and good ideas. As for me, I usually made sure the phone was off before I yelled. [Laughter] "You want me to move that guy after I just glued him down, and cut off his leg? For crying out loud." But I always tried what she suggested, and most of the time she was right. ^M00:29:49 [ Silence ] ^M00:29:53 Right before I brought the finished art to Lee & Low, I had a great Puerto Rican lunch, [laughter] with another Puerto Rican friend who vetted every single page with a merciless native eye. If my rendition of the famous sport looks genuine, thank my friend, Jasmine. And the same for the houses and the landscape scene. She was the one who reminded me that houses down there do not look like the ones in Bethesda, Maryland. After all this vetting, I was finally ready to show the work to eagle eye, Louise May, our editor, also here, as you know. I remember spreading the pictures out onto the big table at the Lee & Low office and holding my breath as Louise looked, and looked, and mostly said it was all fine, "Except," she said very gently, very softly, "I'm just wondering, does this piece --" and it's right over there, you can look at it later. It's the one on the right, not the one on the left, "does this piece actually reflect the text?" No one else had noticed this except Louise, and she was very right, it didn't. I went back to "the snipping board," as Cindy phrases it, and created a whole new spread, this time one that matched the text. This would never have happened without Louise's discerning eye. And by the way, this picture is of the waterfall -- I'll show you presently, and it was Cindy who suggested the waterfall; great idea. Some people, kind people, think this one might be splashing off instead of flying off the page. And I am grateful, both to Cindy and Louise for invaluable help with this correction. This is how I get the waterfall. First, I went to see a real one. There it is in its glory. It's in Oregon. You have to go to Oregon sometimes, just to see a waterfall. [Laughter] And then I went to the museum, and I saw bunches of waterfalls that other people painted, and other people drew, like this one. And then I started to cut, and rip, and glue; and more, and more, and more, and more. And there is the guy that Cindy said was hanging by his fingernails on the rocks, and why couldn't I just stand them up in the ground, or at least the water, and who needed his right leg anyway? I cut him right in half. It only hurt for a little while. [Laughter] There he is before you know what. And there he is without his pants getting ready for the click. And there he is still upstairs. And there he is I'm warming up to moving him down. And there he is getting ready to be moved down. And there he is. And the rest of him is history, you know, it doesn't exist. This last waterfall picture is a friend of mine catching a glimpse of the finished waterfall in the art exhibit in California, as it traveled around the country with selective pieces from the original art show group. This is a special honor. The waterfall is still on the road, which is the reason it's not on display here at the Young Readers Center in the Jefferson Building this month with the rest of the pieces. Usually the last piece that I work on is the cover; and there it is in its glory on the left-hand side. If you've seen the cover of this book, you know that Cindy finally, though perhaps reluctantly, did let me win an argument about having no words on it. "How will anyone figure out what this book is without the title," the wordsmith wondered. But I wanted it to be "wordless as the flight of birds," to quote the poet, writer, and former Librarian of Congress, Archibald MacLeish. Everyone at Lee & Low liked the idea of a wordless cover, including Louise, holding this, only there was something else worrying her about it. When she suggested adding a few tiny birds high up in the sky to help the illusion of vast space, we were sure she had found the right answer for the concerns. And I was just jealous that I hadn't thought of it first. So I brought the cover to New York, with a bunch of little parrots in my pocket. I wanted to work out the precise placement with Louise. And I was just a half a block from the office when both my legs became entangled in an unbreakable circular plastic rope that was lying on the sidewalk. It lassoed me. I could not free myself. And I fell like this, "boing," like a chopped down tree, full-force on my cutting arm against the hard, cruel cement. My arm was smashed to bits. So much for birds in flight that day. But miracles do happen. Mrs. Humpty-Dumpty did get put back together again. And halfway through my total recovery, with my still marginal, but much better right hand somewhat working, even though it was in a sling, and with a little help from my nimble-fingered friend, Olga Goraton [assumed spelling], who was able to do just what I told her to do -- there it is almost, and with a little help from our wonderful designer, Christy Hale -- this is my left-handed letter to her explaining everything that needed to be done. Pretty good for left hand, right? [Laughter] And finally, finally, the birds, big and small alike did take flight. And I can still play the piano so the story does have a happy ending. [Laughter] "Parrots Over Puerto Rico" is an ecology book, and a nature story, and a history story. It's a world story of people and environments. It tells tales of aggressions and politics. I think that one of the interesting aspects of this book is that it shows -- it showed me anyway, just how interdependent all aspects of the story really are, if you just take the time to consider those aspects. It reminds me of what my scientist husband talks about when he speaks of his own work. Endocrinologists these days talk about metabolic syndrome, that is how all body parts function and functions are really interdependent. So my unscientific mind translates this into an interpretation of that old song, "The backbone's connected to the neck bone, the neck bone's connected to the head bone." Remember? The second verse just might be, "North America's connected to the Caribbean, Caribbean's connected to Central America, and Central America's connected to South America." "Parrots Over Puerto Rico" is like that in multiple ways. All the things in this book, maybe all the things in all books that tell true stories about real places show how history, politics, geography, good and bad weather, emigrations, war and peace, families, architecture, science and industry, education, they're all parts of the story. Think about it, these heavy subjects really determine the story behind the story. A little more specifically, the linked cultural heritages, the Americas tell this tale. And as I say thank you so very much to the consortium of Latin American studies programs, and to each of the members of the CLASP Awards Committee, for presenting Cindy and me with this beautiful recognition, it seems especially appropriate to remind you that we feel we are one with you. We support your ideas. With this book we intend to continue to do so, even with our next project. Guess what, it's about Mexico. [Laughter] [Applause] Thank you all for this extraordinary honor. ^M00:37:46 [ Applause ] ^M00:37:50 [ Silence ] ^M00:37:56 >> Well, there we are, we have some -- >> Yes; so we would like to officially share the winning prize of the Americas Award. Since the Americas Award is about weaving stories, Julie Klein, the founder of the Americas Award always would give a quipu [phonetic] from Guatemala, which Barbara purchased on her trip this summer. And so if you guys could both come up and accept your quipu. >> Gorgeous. Oh my goodness, wow. [Laughter] ^M00:38:27 [ Background Conversation ] ^M00:38:43 Oh, it's gorgeous. Thank you. >> Congratulations. >> Thank you very much. >> Congratulations. >> Oh, [inaudible]. ^M00:38:50 [ Applause ] ^M00:38:55 [ Background Conversation ] ^M00:39:01 >> So thank you so much for coming out to share with us with the Americas Award. I did just want to share, again, that the commended titles, the honor books are all a very important part of our award. The commended -- one of the commended titles is "Yaqui Delgado Wants To Kick Your Ass," [laughter] and the author is here, Miss Meg Medina. Duncan Tonatiuh is here. [Applause] And our 2 authors are here. So please take advantage of them being here. Enjoy some reception and get your book signed outside. So thank you so much. ^M00:39:37 [ Applause ] ^M00:39:43 [ Background Conversation ] ^M00:39:58 >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.