Everyone Makes Mistakes in the New Picture Book Poetry Anthology The Mistakes That Made Us from Irene Latham and Charles Waters and Illustrated by Mercè López
The Mistakes That Made Us: Confessions from Twenty Poets
Minneapolis, Minnesota, Oct. 01, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — This October, Carolrhoda Booksâ, an imprint of Lerner Publishing Group™, presents The Mistakes That Made Us: Confessions from Twenty Poets selected by award-winning authors Irene Latham and Charles Waters and illustrated by Mercè López. In this beautiful collection, twenty brave poets share real-life blunders they made as young people and reveal how they learned from them.
Scoring a goal against your own team. Copying a classmate’s schoolwork. Accepting a dare to jump down the stairs . . . and getting hurt. Nobody’s perfect and while making mistakes can be embarrassing, frustrating, and sometimes tearful, what matters is how we respond and learn from them. Twenty celebrated poets—Linda Sue Park, Margarita Engle, Allan Wolf, David Elliott, Matt Forrest Esenwine, Lacresha Berry, George Ella Lyon, Jaime Adoff, Vikram Madan, Kim Rogers, Douglas Florian, Tabatha Yeatts, Jorge Argueta, Jane Yolen, Charles Waters, JaNay Brown-Wood, Irene Latham, April Halprin Wayland, Darren Sardelli, and Naomi Shihab Nye—courageously offer young readers some of the mistakes they made in their youth through many forms of verse. Each poem is followed by a short prose explanation of what happened afterward and what the poet learned. Vibrant, wholesome illustrations from Mercè López accompany each experience with grace and humor.
The Mistakes That Made Us is the perfect book for all who are growing and discovering the best way forward—which is all of us. Each poem and shared experience will encourage young readers to explore their own mistakes with a light heart and a growth mindset.
Praise for The Mistakes That Made Us:
“Dynamic mixed-media artwork from López (Sylvie and the Wolf) offers energetic visual support for each poem in an anthology packed with a broad spectrum of human emotion and experience.”—starred, Publishers Weekly
“Comforting reminders that nobody’s perfect, infused with lessons large and small.”—Kirkus Reviews
About the Authors and Illustrator
Irene Latham and Charles Waters, also known as I & C Construction Company, have been creating books together since 2015. Their published titles include Can I Touch Your Hair? Poems of Race, Mistakes and Friendship, which was named an NCTE Charlotte Huck Honor book; Dictionary for a Better World: Poems, Quotes and Anecdotes from A to Z; African Town, winner of the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction; and Be a Bridge. They want you to know that they’ve made many mistakes along the way, but they continue to grow and learn—just like you. This is their first time curating an anthology.
Mercè López became an illustrator by accident. Her real intention was to be a sculptor, but she fell in love with the visual metaphors she saw exhibited at her art school in Barcelona, Sapin, and ended up becoming a children’s book illustrator. With this passionate mistake, she has illustrated more than fifty books for publishers all over the world, as well as two books published in France that she wrote and illustrated. She won a Lazarillo Award in 2022 in collaboration with Javier Bermúdez for Montañas, a project that also talks about a funny mistake.
About the Publisher
Carolrhoda Booksâ, an imprint of Lerner Publishing Group™, has been publishing high-quality, award-winning books since 1959. Our picture books spark children’s imaginations and offer new ways of looking at the world. Our middle-grade books stand out not only for their quality, but also for the breadth of genres encompassed, from coming-of-age stories to exceptional nonfiction to mysteries. Carolrhoda authors and illustrators have been honored with awards such as a Caldecott Honor, the Coretta Scott King Book Award, the Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal, and the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award. We believe that all children should be able to find themselves in the pages of a book.
Find us on all social media platforms at @LernerBooks and look inside at lernerbooks.com.
The Mistakes That Made Us: Confessions from Twenty Poets
October 1, 2024
$18.99 Hardcover, Jacketed
eBook Also Available
Ages 7 – 11
HC: 978-1-7284-9210-0
40 Pages ● 9 1/4 x 11
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CONTACT: Lindsay Matvick Lerner Publishing Group 800-328-4929 lmatvick@lernerbooks.com
