Call Me Loved! Alma and How She Got Her Name by Juana Martinez-Neal

Alma Sofia Esperanza Jose Pura Candela had a long name. Too long, if you asked her.

"My name is too long, Daddy. It never fits!" said Alma.

Alma is small and her name is so long. But Daddy has a story to tell her about her name.

"Sofia was your grandmother," he began. "She loved books, poetry, flowers, and, of course, me.

"She was the one who taught me to read!"

Alma loves to read. She loves all those things and her Daddy, too.

"I am SOFIA," she says proudly.

And then Daddy tells her about her great grandmother Esperanza who longed to travel and about her Grandfather Jose' who was an artist and took him on long walks, and about her great great aunt Pura, who believed that the spirits of their ancestors were with them. And he tells her of Candela, her mother's mother.

"She always stood up for what is right!" Daddy says.

"And you are the first and only Alma." said Daddy.

And Alma Sofia Esperanza Jose'Pura Candela is ready to write her own story, one that fits her, in Juana Martinez-Neal's 2019 Caldecott Honor Medal-winning Alma and How She Got Her Name (Candlewick Press). As poet Walt Whitman said, "I contain multitudes." So do we all, and Alma's long name fits her and Auntie Pura was right: her ancestors are with her as she writes her full name and begins her own history just as they did. For people who may know something about their own roots, Martinez-Pura gets it just right, and her warm and charming graphite and colored pencil illustrations tell the story graphically for young readers. Says Publishers Weekly, "It’s an origin story that envelops readers like a hug."