Francisco X. Alarcon is an award-winning poet and educator. His acclaimed first book of poetry for children, Laughing Tomatoes and Other Spring Poems, received the National Parenting Publications Gold Medal Award and a Pura Belpre Honor Award from the American Library Association. Considered a leader in the Chicano literary movement, Alarcon was inspired to write poetry by the songs his grandmother used to sing. All of his book present the poems in both Spanish and English. He has recently published his first book of poems for adults, From the Other Side of Night/Del Otro Lado de La Noche: New and Selected Poems. Alarcon directs the Spanish for Native Speakers Program at the University of California, Davis.

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