Planting Stories: The Life of Librarian and Storyteller Pura Belpré

by Anika Aldamuy Denise

She brought her stories. The library changed.

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you want your kid to know what it looks like to change an institution from the inside.

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In 1921, Pura Belpré arrived in New York from Puerto Rico with a suitcase full of folktales — and she planted them everywhere. As New York City's first Puerto Rican librarian, she didn't just shelve books; she wrote them, translated them, performed them in Spanish and English for kids who'd never seen their own stories on a library shelf. This picture book biography shows what it looks like when one person decides an institution has to expand to include her community — not by asking nicely, but by making the stories so undeniable that the shelves have no choice. The award that bears her name still goes to Latine authors and illustrators every year. She built that.

On the record

Find out what they were so afraid of.

The ban is over. The reason for it usually isn’t.

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They called it 'Marxist critical race theory.' What it actually is: a picture book about a Puerto Rican librarian who decided that New York's library system should contain Puerto Rican stories. The parents who challenged it in Northampton, PA were objecting to a book about a woman who made an institution more inclusive — which is, apparently, divisive. The school board read the book, investigated the organization that donated it, found no Marxism, and approved it unanimously. The challenge tells you more about the challengers than the book.

The record

Northampton Area School District, PA
Challenged (not removed)
Board approved the donated books after review
Initiated by: parent or community challenge
HistoricalSource ↗

Where This Book Lives

Setting: Puerto Rico • North America
Voice: Written by a Puerto Rican author
Themes: cultural identity cultural preservation
Topics: book banning in the united states puerto rican migration to new york

The Pura Belpré Award — given annually to Latine authors and illustrators — exists because Belpré made the New York Public Library admit that Puerto Rican stories belonged there. Denise writes this from inside the tradition: she's Nuyorican, from Queens, and the book code-switches between English and Spanish the way Belpré's storytelling did. It was challenged in Pennsylvania in 2022 as 'Marxist critical race theory.' The school board investigated and approved it unanimously. Make of that what you will.

Same event, different angle

The same history — told by someone who saw it differently.

Last Night at the Telegraph Club

Malinda Lo