Alma Flor Ada

Alma Flor Ada is a Cuban American author, poet, educator, and advocate for bilingual learning whose books often connect migration with the sustaining power of family stories. Dancing Home, written with her son Gabriel M. Zubizarreta, follows Margie, a Mexican American girl in California, and Lupe, the cousin newly arrived from Mexico. Margie initially worries that Lupe's presence will expose the Spanish language and cultural ties she has tried to keep separate from school. Lupe, meanwhile, must learn new routines without surrendering the home she remembers. Their alternating experiences make belonging a negotiation, not a lesson in assimilation. Atheneum issued the middle-grade novel in 2011 alongside its Spanish counterpart, Nacer bailando. Dance becomes a shared language through which the cousins recognize each other's strengths. Ada's long work in multicultural education informs the novel's respect for both languages and its conviction that children flourish when home experience is treated as knowledge, not an obstacle.