by Carmen M. Martínez-Roldán, University of Texas, Austin

Here are my graduate students’ responses to The Dreamer in sketch format. Each of these sketches is unique and they represent a range of meanings and interpretations reminding us of how we as readers bring to reading our own experiences and histories (Probst, 1990; Rosenblatt, 1976) as readers and individuals.

As it is reflected in the responses to the first two blogs and in these sketches, the Father figure in the story impacted my students’ reading in different ways. Continue reading →

by Carmen M. Martínez-Roldán, University of Texas, Austin

This week we aim to have an online discussion of The Dreamer. A small group of students from Teachers College participating in a course on Latino literature, will share their responses to the novel. Please, join our discussion. One of my favorite scenes was the interchange of gifts between Neftalí and an unknown child through the hole in the fence of the backyard. Continue reading →

by Carmen M. Martínez-Roldán, University of Texas, Austin

During the month of July we want to invite readers to respond to the 2011 Pura Belpré Award winner, The Dreamer (2010), written by Pam Muñoz Ryan and illustrated by Peter Sis. Based on events of Pablo Neruda’s childhood and inspired by his poetry, Pam Muñoz created a fictionalized account that offers adolescent readers the opportunity to meet one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century: Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.

Continue reading →