Child, you are awake!
You are alive!
You are a bright star,
Inside our hearts.
Told with a combination of powerful, spare language and sumptuous and complex imagery that is typical of Yuyi Morales’s work, this is the story of a fawn making her way through a border landscape teaming with flora and fauna native to the region. A gentle but empowering voice encourages her to face her fears when she comes across an obstacle in the form of an insurmountable barrier.
Yuyi Morales’ first book since her New York Times bestseller Dreamers is a book for very young children looking for their place in a world full of uncertainty. It is a book with resonance for all children, especially those whose safety is threatened due to the immigration crisis in the US.
Bright Star is also available in a Spanish language edition, Lucero.
¿Who is?
Yuyi Morales
Yuyi Morales was born in Xalapa, Mexico on November 7, 1968. The first years of Yuyi’s life were marked by both scarcity and creativity. Yuyi and her two sisters did not have the same clothes or receive the same presents as their schoolmates. Instead, their mother sewed Yuyi and her sisters’ clothes, bedsheets, curtains, and lampshades. When the family couldn’t afford the gifts the girls wanted for their birthdays, Yuyi’s mother would make everything from the cakes to the invitations to their dresses to their shoes. In a sense, her mother’s resourcefulness was Yuyi’s first introduction to art.
Other Books
Dreamers
We are resilience. We are hope. We are dreamers.
Viva Frida
A 2015 Caldecott Honor Book
A 2015 Pura Belpré (Illustrator) Award
Niño Wrestles the World
Señoras y señores, put your hands together for the fantastic, spectacular, one of a kind . . .Niño!
My Blog
Projects
Nuestra voz en los muros
Workshops woven from self-care, self-knowledge, self-defense and rituals that call for justice and the joy of women. The work is divided into two parts: virtual workshops that dealt with collective creation, narratives, life stories, and community art and culminated...
Mural in Los Sauces Market
Yuyi negotiated with the municipal government of her hometown, Xalapa, Veracruz, to get the necessary permissions for a local artist to paint a four wall mural at one of the local mercados. Yuyi also provided financing for the artist to purchase materials to paint...
Dreamers Book Bus
Yuyi provided artwork from Dreamers to Make Way for Books, a nonprofit organization in Tucson, AZ to createthe Dreamers Book Bus. Make Way for Books uses the bus to go out into the community and provide high quality early literacy programming for families with...
Fresno County Library’s Mobile Literacy Unit, designed with images from Dreamers
The Fresno County Library's Mobile Literacy Unit will be driving the rural roads of Fresno County for anywhere from 10 to 15 years. The role of this mobile literacy unit is to bring books and information to children and families for whom getting to the library is not...
The Anti-bias Book Bearer Program for Highlights Foundation
Yuyi participated in the Highlights Foundation's Essential Conversations seminar in the fall of 2020, Dismantling the Kaleidoscope, where she developed the concept of the Anti-bias Book Bearer. An Anti-bias Book Bearer is a reader who actively questions their own...
National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature solo Exhibit
In 2019, the National Center for Children's Illustrated Literature in Abeline, Texas, presented the first ever solo exhibit of Yuyi's work, Soñadora. This exhibit consists of over 50 original pieces of Yuyi's art and traces her development and accomplishments as an...
For inquiries, contact:
info@yuyimorales.com