Edna Iturralde facts for kids

Kids Encyclopedia Facts

Quick facts for kids Edna Iturralde

Born	(1948-05-10) 10 May 1948 (age 77) Quito, Ecuador
Genre	Children's and young adult fiction Multicultural short stories and novels magic realism historical fiction picture books ecological novels mythical fantasy
Spouse	Bruce Kernan
Children	six children

Edna Iturralde (born in 1948) is a famous writer from Ecuador. She has won many national and international awards for her books. Many people think she is the most important writer for children and young adults in her country. She has published over 50 books, and some of them are also available in Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Spain. Edna was even a finalist for the International Latino Book Awards in 2014. She lives in Quito, Ecuador, with her husband and four dogs. She loves visiting schools to meet the children who read her stories!

Biography
Work
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Biography

Her Amazing Impact

Edna Iturralde is known as one of Latin America's most talented and active writers for kids and teens. She has written 59 books over 35 years! Her collection of short stories, Green Was My Forest, was chosen as one of the top ten children's books written in Latin America during the 20th Century.

Edna's influence goes beyond Ecuador. In the United States, four of her books were picked for school reading programs in Los Angeles and Houston. The Texas Library Association recommended two of her bilingual books. Also, two of her books are on the required summer reading list by Scholastic Books.

Three of her books have won the Skipping Stones International Book Prize.
Five of her books won the International Latino Book Award.

In Mexico, three of her books were chosen by the SEP (the Mexican Ministry of Public Education) for all school libraries. These are big achievements for a writer from a small country like Ecuador!

Childhood and Early Writing

Edna's childhood helped her become a writer. Her father, an aviator, died when she was only one year old. She was raised as an only child. Her grandfather told her stories, and her mother read to her often. Without siblings, Edna used her imagination a lot. She would tell stories to her dolls and dogs, and spend time daydreaming.

In fifth grade, her class needed a play for a school assembly. When they couldn't find one, Edna went home and wrote it herself! Her teacher loved it, and the play was performed. This made Edna realize how much she loved writing. From then on, she dreamed of becoming a writer.

Her classmates often asked her to write stories for them about things important in their lives. She also wrote for the school newspaper and joined the Oratory Club. In 1967, she became the first girl to win Ecuador's Presidential National Award for Oratory. She also won the oratory prize from the Municipality of Quito.

After school, she needed to work. She became a tour guide in Ecuador. Tourists loved her stories so much that they voted her the best tour guide in South America! She also opened Quito's first boutique, called Carnaby Street. She designed and sold clothes and jewelry there. At 22, she married Diederick van Maasdijk and became a full-time mom to four children.

Creating La Cometa Magazine

Being a mom actually helped her writing career! Her children loved her bedtime stories and insisted she tell them exactly the same way every time. So, she started writing them down. When a newspaper in Quito, El Comercio, asked for children's stories, she sent one of hers. They loved it and asked her to provide a story every week!

After writing for the newspaper for a year (1980–1981), Edna started her own magazine, La Cometa (The Kite), in 1982. Sadly, that same year, her husband died in a plane crash. Despite this, Edna kept writing La Cometa. It was the first weekly children's magazine in Ecuador.

For eleven years (1982–1993), she produced La Cometa every week. She wrote all 16 pages herself, including stories, serial novels, comics, and games. She even used different pen names so people would think the magazine had a bigger team! La Cometa was given away for free with the newspaper Diario Hoy. This helped it reach about 210,000 children every week. Many children who couldn't afford books learned to love reading because of La Cometa. Her magazine even inspired other free children's magazines in South America.

In 1985, she married Bruce Kernan and had two more children.

Growing as an Author

In 1993, UNICEF (United Nations Children's Emergency Fund) and Ecuador's Ministry of Education asked Edna to write about important values for children. She wrote 60 fun stories in three books called To Be and To Share. She also worked as a consultant for PLAN International, writing a helpful and funny book about social relationships.

From 1996 to 1998, she worked for the Educational Development Center (EDC). She created 15 free radio programs called "Let's Play Theatre." These programs helped preschool teachers guide young children to develop emotional intelligence and solve problems using their imagination. Many daycare centers in Ecuador have used them successfully.

In 1996, Edna started the Union of Writers of Literature for Children (UDELI). Her goal was to help children's and young adult writers get their books published. At that time, most children's books in Ecuador were from other countries. UDELI published a collection of Christmas stories, which helped new writers and illustrators get noticed. This really boosted children's literature in Ecuador.

In 1998, major international publishers in Ecuador, Editorial Santillana and Editorial Norma, started publishing Edna's books. Before this, most Ecuadorian writers had to publish their own work. The success of Edna's books like Verde fue mi Selva encouraged these publishers to look for more Ecuadorian authors. Since then, Edna Iturralde has continued to publish many books with Santillana, Norma, Editorial SM, and Penguin Random House. She has published 59 books, including picture books, novels, and short story collections, in Colombia, Mexico, Spain, and the United States.

From 2000 to 2002, Edna taught a course on Creative Writing at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito. In 2016, she started writing a weekly column for Family Magazine, a part of El Comercio newspaper.

Her Impact on Literature

In 2006, Edna founded and became the first president of the Ecuadorian branch of the Latin-American Academy of Children and Young Adults Literature. She was president until 2012. The literary conferences she organized in Ecuador helped bring international attention to Ecuadorian children's and young adult literature.

Edna has strongly helped promote reading and appreciation for children's and young adult literature in Ecuador. The Hoy en la Educación Foundation even named its yearly literary contest after her. She asked them to give the award only to new, unpublished authors to encourage them. She has visited hundreds of schools and given many interviews on radio, TV, and in newspapers and magazines to talk about her books.

Her books are now part of the curriculum for Children's Literature studies at several Ecuadorian universities. Her stories have even been turned into plays and ballets. The National Symphony Orchestra commissioned a musical piece based on one of her books, Los hijos de la Guacamaya. Edna has received many awards, like "Woman of the Year for Literature" (2013) and the "Manuela Saenz Libertadora del Libertador Gold Medal" (2014). These awards have greatly increased awareness in Ecuador about how important literature is for the development of children and young adults.

Dr. Jaime García Padrino, a professor of Children's and Young Adult Literature, said that Edna's work is "one of the most outstanding in Ecuador and, by extension, in Latin America." He praised her for the many books she has written and the variety of topics she covers. He also noted that her historical books are well-researched and accurate. He believes Edna Iturralde has made a huge contribution to Spanish-American Children's and Young Adult Literature. She helps people see the world through children's eyes and creates new readers who are sensitive, tolerant, and caring.

Work

Edna Iturralde's books often explore different cultures, ethnic groups, and social topics. In a world where local histories can be forgotten, her stories bring back and share special knowledge from different groups. She combines fictional stories with serious research to document and share this knowledge. She helps people discover or remember identities that might be unknown or forgotten.

Edna is considered one of the most important writers for children and young people in Ecuador. She has published 58 books on many different themes. For the last few years, she has focused on stories based on ethnicity, and she is a pioneer in this type of children's literature in Ecuador. She has also taught creative writing at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito.

She has won many awards and nominations both in Ecuador and other countries. Some of her most important awards include:

The Ecuador National Prize for Children's Literature Dario Guevara Mavorga (Ecuador, 2001)
The Skipping Stones Award (United States, 2002 and 2005)
The Mention of Honor of the Municipality of Quito (2003 and 2004)

She was nominated twice (in 2012 and 2013) for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA), which is a very prestigious award for children's literature. Her work was also chosen by the SEP (Mexican Ministry of Education) in 2003 and 2005. In 2005, two of her books were nominated for the Ecuadorian Honor List of IBBY (International Board of Books for the Young). She is the president of the Ecuadorian Academy of Children and Juvenile Literature.

Images for kids

Edna Iturralde with her dogs.
Edna Iturralde