Publications
About the Book
From New York Times bestseller and Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Díaz comes a debut picture book about the magic of memory and the infinite power of the imagination.
Every kid in Lola’s school was from somewhere else.
Hers was a school of faraway places.
So when Lola’s teacher asks the students to draw a picture of where their families immigrated from, all the kids are excited. Except Lola. She can’t remember The Island—she left when she was just a baby. But with the help of her family and friends, and their memories—joyous, fantastical, heartbreaking, and frightening—Lola’s imagination takes her on an extraordinary journey back to The Island. As she draws closer to the heart of her family’s story, Lola comes to understand the truth of her abuela’s words: “Just because you don’t remember a place doesn’t mean it’s not in you.”
Gloriously illustrated and lyrically written, Islandborn is a celebration of creativity, diversity, and our imagination’s boundless ability to connect us—to our families, to our past and to ourselves.
About the Author
Junot Díaz's fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Best American Short Stories. His debut book, Drown, was met with unprecedented acclaim; it became a national bestseller, earned him a PEN/Malamud Award, and has since grown into a landmark of contemporary literature. His first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, was published in 2007 and won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. In 2012, the MacArthur Foundation awarded him a MacArthur Fellowship, popularly known as the "Genius Grant", $500,000 over five years, no strings attached. Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey, Díaz lives in New York City and is a professor of writing in the MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing Program.
Díaz, Junot and Leo Espinosa (Illustrator). Islandborn. New York: Dial Books, 2018.