Asia in the Heart, World on the Mind

See You in the Cosmos by Jack Cheng (Dial Books for Young Readers, 2017) "My name is Alex Petroski and my house is in Rockview, Colorado, United States of America, planet Earth. I am eleven years and eight months old . . ." Filipino American Alex Petroski LOVES astronomy. His hero is Carl Sagan, the astronomer who sent a "Golden Record" out into space. In 1977, NASA launched Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. In case the spacecraft ever made contact with extraterrestrial life forms, or future humans, each had on board a "Golden Record," a copper phonograph LP featuring a collection of sounds and images meant to portray the life and culture on planet Earth. The recorded sounds included things like wind, thunder, bird songs, greetings in 55 languages, and the brainwaves of a woman in love. (You can actually listen to the audio of the Golden Record here .) Alex has built his very own rocket, Voyager 3, and plans to launch it into space at SHARF (Sout...

I am very happy to share an interview with  Erin Entrada Kelly , Filipino American author of the excellent middle grade novels  Blackbird Fly ( Greenwillow Books, 2015),  The Land of Forgotten Girls (Greenwillow Books, 2016) - one of the best middle grade novels I've ever read,  Hello, Universe (Greenwillow Books, 2017), and the forthcoming You Go First (Greenwillow Books, 2018). Hello, Erin! To start, can you please tell us about your Filipino background? I am mestiza. My father is from the US. My mother is from Sogod, Southern Leyte, and lives in Cebu. What are the five books that turned you into a writer? It’s hard to pinpoint five books. I’ve always been a big reader. When I was about seven or eight, I realized that books were just pen and paper, which meant that I could write my own stories. That’s when I started writing. I’ve been writing for so long that I don’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t working on something. So I guess I ...