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			By means of bilingual books telling stories of her childhood, Roni Capin Rivera-Ashford seeks to touch the hearts of Hispanic kids in the United States and motivate them to preserve their language and their culture. A native of the border town of Nogales, Arizona, Rivera-Ashford worked for 30 years as a first-grade teacher in public schools in that city and in Tucson where she became aware of the lack of bilingual books that could motivate children to read whose first language is not English. "Many of the books we had were just books in English translated into Spanish," the 51-year-old author told Efe. That was how the idea came to her of writing short stories for her students, with which they could identify and share their experiences. Years later when she retired, those stories inspired her to write "My Nana's Remedies/Los Remedios De Mi Nana," published by the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. The book that was accepted by the Arizona Library Association tells with simple phrases in English and Spanish all about home remedies popular in the Hispanic community, not only in the United States but in Mexico and other Latin American countries. "When my throat is sore, my nana makes me cinnamon tea," the book says. "We all have beautiful memories of our nana and her unstinting love, or of some other person who was very important to us during our childhood," Rivera-Ashford said. She added that the book was inspired by Nana Juanita, a woman from Mexico who took care of her while her parents were at work. It is also dedicated to her Nana Lilian, the mother of her dad, whom she remembers with much affection. "Hispanic kids identify a lot with this book, and even their parents have told me that some tears came to their eyes when they read it and remembered that they too drank chamomile tea when they were little and they had stomach aches and their nana gave it to them," she said. She believes it so important that Hispanic children retain their language and above all that they feel proud of their traditions. In 2007, Rivera-Ashford published her second book, "Hip, Hip, Hooray, It's Monsoon Day!/¡Ajua, Ya Llego el Chubasco!," about the rainy season in the Arizona desert. She also includes the Dia de San Juan fiesta on June 24, a time of the year marked by heavy downpours in Arizona with spectacular electrical storms. In 2009 it became the first bilingual text to be chosen by Arizona children as the ONEBOOKAZ Kids winner, a program that encourages schoolchildren around the state to read the same book at the same time and take part in discussing it. "This book is very interesting - it not only tells the story of the storm, but also combines science with such typical traditions as eating acorns, seeds of the oak tree," among others, she said. The author refuses to classify herself in a single ethnic group, since she says she comes from a mixture of different cultures including Hispanic and Jewish. Despite the success of her books, she acknowledges that it is hard to survive in such a competitive area as the literary world, above all with the budget cuts many publishers are facing. "I'd like my books to be read by all the Hispanic kids in this country, and perhaps in Mexico and other Latin American countries, but to do that I'll have to find a publisher interested in them," she said.
	Writer seeks to motivate Hispanic kids to preserve their culture Source: EFE date: 02-18-2010