The Mexican-American author of such bestselling books as Becoming Naomi Leon and Esperanza Riding, she received the Willa Cather Literary Award in 1999. Her children's nonfiction work, When Marian Sang, won both the Orbis Pictus Award and the Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award. She grew up in California's San Joaquin Valley. She later received her master's degree from San Diego State University.
