Monica Gunning facts for kids
Monica Gunning (born in 1930) is a writer from Jamaica and America. She writes books and poems for children. Her stories are often about growing up in the Caribbean and what it's like to move to a new country.
About Monica Gunning
Monica Gunning was born in Jamaica in 1930. When she was 18, she moved to New York City. There, she went to college at the City College of New York.
Her first book of poems for children was called Not a Copper Penny in Me House: Poems from the Caribbean. It came out in 1993. The book had pictures by Frané Lessac. This collection of 15 poems shared stories about Jamaican culture. It even received a special mention from the Américas Awards. These awards celebrate books for children and young adults.
Monica Gunning wrote more books after that. These included Under the Breadfruit Tree: Island Poems (1998) and America, My New Home (2004). She uses her own life experiences in her writing. She shares what it was like to be a child in Jamaica. She also writes about her journey as a young person moving to the United States.
In 2004, she wrote a book called A Shelter in Our Car. This story is about a girl and her mother who are going through a tough time without a permanent home. Monica Gunning worked with the Homeless Children's Network in San Francisco to create this book. It won a Skipping Stones Honor Award in 2005. It also received an honorable mention from the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Awards in 2004.
A Shelter in Our Car was even turned into a children's musical! A theater group in New York called Making Books Sing adapted it in 2007.
Monica Gunning also has a master's degree in education from Mount St. Mary's College in Los Angeles. She also studied at the University of Guadalajara. She worked for many years as an elementary school teacher. She taught children who spoke more than one language. She also taught English to students learning it as a second language. She even helped train other teachers at the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles.
Books by Monica Gunning
- Not a Copper Penny in Me House (1993)
- Under the Breadfruit Tree (1998)
- America, My New Home (2004)
- A Shelter in Our Car (2004)
