Larios, Julie 1949–

views updated

Larios, Julie 1949–

(Julie Hofstrand Larios)

Personal

Born July 8, 1949; married; children: three. Education: University of Washington, M.F.A. (poetry).

Addresses

Home and office—Seattle, WA.

Career

Writer and educator. University of Washington, Seattle, creative-writing instructor; Vermont College, Montpelier, instructor in children's and young-adult writing.

Awards, Honors

Academy of American Poets Prize, 2002; Ruth Lilly fellowship finalist; Strong Rx Medicine Poetry Prize, Margie Review, 2005, for poem "Flood"; Boston Globe/Horn Book Award Honor Book designation, 2006, for Yellow Elephant: A Bright Bestiary.

Writings

On the Stairs, illustrated by Mary Hofstrand Cornish, Front Street Books (Asheville, NC), 1999.

Have You Ever Done That?, illustrated by Anne Hunter, Front Street Books (Asheville, NC), 2001.

Yellow Elephant: A Bright Bestiary, illustrated by Julie Paschkis, Harcourt (Orlando, FL), 2006.

Contributor of poetry to numerous journals and anthologies, including Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares, Threepenny Review, Georgia Review, Best American Poetry 2007, Pushcart Prize Anthology XXXI, and Best New Poets 2006. Cortland Review, contributing editor.

Sidelights

The author of picture books such as Yellow Elephant: A Bright Bestiary and Have You Ever Done That?, Julie Larios is a poet who enjoys cultivating intriguing words and composing them in a series of lists. In an interview with Time for Kids online, she recommended that aspir-

ing poets create a list of favorite words and advised would-be poets to "keep that list with you, and make poems with those words in them." Larios's own love of words was kindled in the seventh grade, when she won a national poetry contest. Discovering the works of nineteenth-century American poet Walt Whitman, she then "wrote poetry galore," as she admitted in an online interview with Cynthia Leitich Smith for Cynsations. For Larios, the reward of writing poetry comes from the "satisfaction in working hard and producing something delicate—a poem—from something as large as language." "And of course," Larios added, "there's joy in the words themselves."

Larios shares her love for words with children through the books featuring her poetry. Her first published work, On the Stairs, was actually a family affair; it was illustrated by Larios's sister, artist Mary Hofstrand Cornish. On the Stairs is a counting book that finds a brother and sister mouse counting the stairs that they ascend. A Publishers Weekly reviewer praised the sisters' collaboration as a "polished concept book," citing in particular Larios's text as "pleasingly repetitive and full of cozy details."

In Yellow Elephant, featuring the ethnic-inspired artwork of Julie Paschkis, Larios adds to the vibrancy of the colorful illustrations by creating verses that radiate an aural energy. Each poem in the collection describes an animal and its colors, which are represented both as visual hues and as symbols of moods and actions. For instance, the poet describes a brown mouse, then moves up the color spectrum to find an "angry red donkey" as well as a "perky purple puppy." Gillian Engberg, writing in Booklist, remarked that in Yellow Elephant Larios's "well-crafted poems flash with color and emotion."

Biographical and Critical Sources

BOOKS

Larios, Julie, Yellow Elephant: A Bright Bestiary, Harcourt (Orlando, FL), 2006.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, December 15, 1999, Kathy Broderick, review of On the Stairs, p. 790; March 15, 2006, Gillian Engberg, review of Yellow Elephant, p. 49.

Kirkus Reviews, October 1, 2001, review of Have You Ever Done That?, p. 1426; March 15, 2006, review of Yellow Elephant, p. 294.

Publishers Weekly, October 18, 1999, review of On the Stairs, p. 81; October 22, 2001, review of Have You Ever Done That?, p. 74; April 10, 2006, review of Yellow Elephant, p. 71.

School Library Journal, December, 2001, Jane Marino, review of Have You Ever Done That?, p. 106; April, 2006, Carol L. MacKay, review of Yellow Elephant, p. 127.

Seattle Post-Intelligence, June 9, 2000, "Huge Break for UW's Poetry Northwest, a Small Magazine with a Big Reputation," p. 34.