Luca's Bridge/El Puente de Luca: The Future of Patterns

✭Tejas Star Reading List, 2020-21

✭ALSC Notable Children's Book 2020

Luca has never lived outside the U.S., but when his parents receive a letter in the mail, the family must pack up and leave home for a strange land.

Together in their car, Luca, his brother Paco, and their parents head across the border to Mexico where his parents were born. Luca doesn't understand why he must leave the only home he's ever known, his friends, and his school. He struggles through lonely and disorienting times--reflected both in Real's delicate, symbolic illustrations and through Llanos' description of his dreams--and leans on music, memory, and familial love for support. Luca's Bridge / El puente de Luca is a story for everyone about immigration, deportation, home, and identity.

Born in Lima, Peru, to two journalists, Mariana Llanos developed an early passion for writing. She studied theater in the prestigious CuatroTablas school in Lima. She has lived in Oklahoma since 2002, where she worked as a teacher in a preschool center for several years. In 2013 Mariana self-published her first book, Tristan Wolf, which won a Finalist in the 2013 Readers' Favorite Book Award. Since then, she has published seven books independently in English and Spanish and through virtual technology has chatted with students from more than 150 schools around the world to promote literacy. In December 2017 she was recognized with a Human Rights Award by the United Nations Association of Oklahoma City and the Human Rights Alliance of Oklahoma for her work promoting literacy. She lives in Oklahoma City.

Anna López Real is a freelance illustrator born in Guadalajara, Mexico. She spent her early years in a small town with a big lake, in a bilingual home full of books, movies, diverse music and art. She has a BD in Graphic Design from Universidad de Guadalajara. Since she was young, she has needed to feel colors, shadows, textures and shapes with her own hands, which inspired her to use traditional techniques. She is also the co-founder of a local stationary company. Her favorite place is the beach, and she loves to read and hang out with her family and her cats and dogs. She is passionate about human rights, animal rights and has a great love for nature. She lives in Guadalajara, Mexico.