For bilingual children's author Margarita Robleda, there is no greater satisfaction than a child's joyful response to her performances at libraries and bookstores throughout the United States and Mexico. 'Four years ago, I gave a presentation at the Benavidez school in Houston, Texas. I speak, I sing and ask children to repeat phrases like, 'Yes, I can, and I'm very smart,'' says Robleda. 'There was a four-year-old named William who had been in school six months without opening his mouth once. After I met him that day, he entered his classroom and said to his teacher, 'I can do it, I'm very smart.' William had been taken from his country, his language, and his family, and he felt intimidated. That day, however, he played silly games kids love to play. I asked myself, was it the laughter, the music, the games? I don't know, but for the first time in a while, William felt at home.'

Robleda's simple message of hope and biculturalism has made her books independent best sellers in Mexico and the United States for more than 20 years. She's published more than 82 titles since her first book of short stories, De que se puede...se puede (That It's Possible, It's Possible, Amaquemecan, 1983). Since then, her rhymes-and-tongue-twister title Números tragaldabas (Tongue-tied Numbers, Planeta, 2003) sold 90,000 to Mexico's secretary of public education's library classrooms alone. For Mexico's federal district department of education and culture, she sold more than 50,000 copies of her children's story El mejor lugar del mundo (The Best Place in the World, Education and Culture Dept., 2000). In Latin America and Spain, she has been published by well-respected houses like Grupo Planeta and Sistesa. And north of the border, Robleda also managed to spark plenty of interest: Houghton Mifflin, Scott Foresman, Hampton Brown, and Harcourt Brace have all published her works. According to a July 2003 article in Mexico's La Jornada magazine, she has sold more than a half million copies of her oeuvre since she first got her work published here in the early 1990s.

Now, Santillana USA has just released all four of her Rima, Remas, Rana (Rowing Frogs Rhymes) series of stories for children ages three to seven in both Spanish and English editions, and a CD with Robleda singing the series' stories. Two longer bilingual novelettes for children ages eight to 12, Paco, un niño en los Estados Unidos/Paco, A Boy in the United States and María, una niña en los Estados Unidos/Maria, a Girl in the United States, will come out this fall.

Silvia Matute, director of the general books division for Santillana USA, knew she had stumbled onto something good when she first saw Robleda. 'I met Margarita at CABE [California Association for Bilingual Educators], a book fair for bilingual teachers,' says Matute. 'I noticed how packed the room she was performing in was. Teachers were standing up to sing, clap along, or dance. They were either laughing hysterically or had tears in their eyes. Margarita enlisted me to help her sell her books by the end of the night. People were fighting over the few cassettes and books she had there. But I remember she had such a special message of hope and personal achievement.'

Robleda hopes this special message will instill a hunger for achievement into bicultural-bilingual education—one that could help reinvent the future of a disputed institution. In the past, teaching English to new immigrants in the United States has often focused on grammar drills and memorizing empty Jack-and-Jill type stories. Robleda hopes to introduce a compelling identity-building component to reach out to new immigrants with her mostly curriculum-based literature. When immigrant children and adults arrive in this country, they are either enrolled in English-only, total immersion programs that emphasize rapid assimilation or eased into bilingual programs that often are simply weak translations of standard U.S. curriculums, with little reference to the experiences those children are leaving behind. Robleda believes such a disregard for culture can obliterate a child's identity and threaten their self-esteem.

'There is no need to completely lose one's culture in order to gain another one,' says Robleda, who spent time as a child in both the United States and Mexico. 'I declared myself a Mexican citizen when I was 21, but now I wish I had the option to say I am from both countries.' The author's diverse work hopes to blend U.S. and Latin cultures in order to ease the transition for others. She reintroduces a cleverness and poetry often missing in U.S. Spanish-language translations, packing her stories with inside jokes, including the silly rhymes, riddles, and wordplays that define the Mexican sense of humor. In fact, when she hosted a children's radio show in Mexico, she asked listeners for their favorite riddles to help inspire her next wordplay book and got more than 3,500 ideas.

Robleda also hopes to help Mexican and other Latin American children shed the gender baggage they bring with them from their countries of origin. 'In Paco, A Boy in the United States, I tell a story about a boy who gets upset when some people call him a mojado ('wetback'), and I try in my stories to show boys that it's all right to show their emotions. On the other hand, Rebeca, (the protagonist in Robleda's book by the same name available from her new series), is a girl who likes to skateboard and play the trumpet, instead of just sitting around looking pretty.'

Using songs and acclamations like 'I'm not Barbie, I'm beautiful' to create a newfound self-esteem for her audience seems to be a primary inspiration for Robleda, whether her audience consists of children or adults. Her only novel, which Robleda sold 5,000 copies of by hand, ¿Quién es Irene Torres? (Who is Irene Torres?, Demac, 1991), tells the story of a housewife who begins to write stories in her journal despite her husband's protests. Yet Robleda's aims don't just stop at achieving self-esteem for immigrant Latin Americans. Most of her recent books are simultaneously released in English, and she hopes to write stories compelling enough to reach all people.

'As educators, we have to compete with video games, television, and a general lack of motivation in society today,' says Robleda. 'There is such little hope or creativity in children's entertainment. Most stories these days seem to either focus on potty humor or are dumbed down. We need to tell children stories to help them remember they are alive.'

If there's any hope for diverting a young child's eye from the television to a book, Robleda's clever titles including Un gato de las mil narices (The Cat with a Million Noses, Houghton Mifflin, 1993) and El carrito de monchito (Monchito's Car, Houghton Mifflin, 1993) give it a fighting chance. In 2000, Scholastic's Club Leo distributed 4,000 copies of each of these titles to their members.

A Rebellious Child

Robleda was born in Mérida, Yucatán, in the late 1940s and studied in San Antonio, Texas, for two years when she was 12 years old. As a young girl, she hinted at future rebellion by writing 'protest songs' about peace and love. 'After I read The Little Prince, I started to write songs in a fable style,' sayd Robleda. 'When adults heard my animal songs, they said, 'Oh, that music would be great for kids.'' When she was about 20, she noticed that all her friends seemed to be getting married out of social obligation instead of love, and had no prospect of attending university. She scandalized her community by choosing to leave Mérida for Mexico City.

With no education or special skills, she found few opportunities in the big city, taking odd jobs in places like Avis Rent-A-Car to eek out a living. Her life took a major turn when one of her former teachers got her a job as a volunteer in a small mountain town working with the native Tarahumara people. Living that simple life, earning $50 a month, she learned her true calling.

'I lived like a nun and learned what a life of peace is,' she says. 'I came to terms with what I truly needed from life.' She moved back to Mexico City and joined a writer's group, where she met the director of a small children's publishing house named Amaquemecan that had just gotten off the ground. They published her first book, which included the first story she ever wrote, a tale about a straight line that longed to be a circle. She began her life as a writer, giving presentations at book fairs around the country to promote her rapidly prolific work.

Robleda has also written political commentary, essays, and poetry. In 1984, she moved back to Mérida and started her own children's television show, 'El mundo de Margarita y Chavita.' She found tremendous success until she tired of the show's commercialism and left for the north, making her living selling around 3,000 LPs of her own recordings out of the back of her Volkswagen.

Then one day Oralia Garza de Cortés, a U.S. librarian who specializes in Spanish books for children, recognized her name at the Guadalajara Book Fair. 'I was shocked that she had heard of my name,' says Robleda. 'She told me that she had read my stories at a library in Houston.' Through Garza de Cortés, Robleda was invited to libraries in San Antonio, a very special place for her, given that her grandparents had lived there for 60 years.

Since then she has worked as a motivational speaker for different airlines, a children's radio show host, and a full-time child's performer, traveling to the United States 17 times last year alone. Constantly seeking new audiences, Robleda will tell her stories and guessing games to anyone—from the immigration officer checking her car at the border to a Salvadoran security guard who can help her relate to the new influx of Salvadoran children entering the United States.

Robleda's desire to leap over boundaries must be what ties her to her signature animal, the frog, which she often invokes in conversation. 'Frogs jump and travel to new places,' says Robleda. 'They sing to the moon just for the love of singing. They seem to be all the same, and get lost in a crowd, but in reality they are unique in the universe. And, well, I like to jump a lot.'