Happy Asian Pacific Islander American Heritage Month! I know we only have about four days left, but better late than never! Keep reading to find out more about the cool people I met in this photo, plus some updates including a visit with the Mayor of Los Angeles!

I just got back from a wonderful ceremony honoring the teen winners of the annual Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month Creative Writing Competition, sponsored by the office of L.A. Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa, Disney, Time Warner Cable, ABC 7 News, FOX Entertainment Group, and the Department of Cultural Affairs of the City of Los Angeles. It was very inspiring to see so many young people ages 11 to 18 who are passionate about writing!

As for Asian Pacific Islander American Heritage Month, it is celebrated every May. According to the Wikipedia link: "Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (APAHM) is celebrated in May to commemorate the contributions of people of Asian and Pacific Islander descent in the United States. Congress passed a joint Congressional Resolution in 1978 to commemorate Asian American Heritage Week during the first week of May. This date was chosen because two important anniversaries occurred during this time: the arrival of the first Japanese immigrants in America on May 7, 1843 and the completion of the transcontinental railroad (by many Chinese laborers) on May 10, 1869. In 1990 Congress voted to expand it from a week to a month long celebration and in May 1992, the month of May was permanently designated as 'Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month.'"

I'm very excited that my latest book, SHINING STAR: THE ANNA MAY WONG STORY (Lee & Low Books '09) comes out May 30th, just in time to celebrate the last couple of days of AAPI American Heritage Month!

For more information, go here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_Pacific_American_Heritage_Month

Photo of the panel, L-R: Ravi Malhotra, me, Dante Basco, Shoichi Iwasaki. Jason Song, not pictured, because he had to leave early.

The panel moderator was the amazing and charismatic actor DANTE BASCO. He has starred in dozens of movies and TV shows, from his famous role in 1991's "HOOK" with Steven Spielberg to "ENTOURAGE" to the dance movie "TAKE THE LEAD" with Antonio Banderas. (And yes, he is a great dancer and he can breakdance!) He earned a Young Artist Award nomination for Best Young Actor Co-starring in a Motion Picture and won the Young Artist Award with the cast of "HOOK" for Outstanding Young Ensemble Cast. His latest projects include "AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER," "BLOOD RIVER," SUBJECT: I LOVE YOU," and "THE OUTSIDE." He was very down to earth and charming, and it turned out he is also an accomplished poet (published poet and spoken word poet/rapper) and he has taught young people how to express themselves through poetry.

For more information on DANTE BASCO, check out his Wikipedia link here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Basco

And here's a great interview with Dante with Asia Pacific Arts here:

http://www.asiaarts.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=44225

The panel consisted of myself and Academy Award-winning filmmaker and producer RAVI MALHOTRA, UCLA Professor Dr. SHOICHI IWASAKI, and Los Angeles Times reporter JASON SONG.

RAVI MALHOTRA won the Academy Award in 2007 for Best Live Action Short Film for his comedy/musical WEST BANK STORY, directed by Ari Sandel, co-written by Sandel and Kim Ray, produced by Pascal Vaguelsy, Amy Kim, Ashley Jordan, Ravi Malhotra, and featuring choreography by Ramon Del Barrio. The film is a parody of the classic musical film West Side Story, which in turn is an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. The film follows the romance between the relatives of the owners of rival falafel restaurants, one Israeli and the other Palestnian, respectively named the Kosher Kings and the Hummus Hut, in the West Bank. The film stars Ben Newmark as the IDF soldier, Noureen DeWulf as the Palestinian cashier, A.J. Tannen as the Israeli restaurant owner and Joey Naber as his Palestinian rival. The film premiered at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, and was screened at numerous additional film festivals across the world, garnering several awards.  It won the 2006 Oscar in the category Best Live Action Short Film. Ravi graduated from the USC School of Cinema-Television.

For more info on Ravi, check out his bio here:

http://www.westbankstory.com/html/bios/malhotra.html

For more info on his movie WEST BANK STORY, go here:

http://www.westbankstory.com/index.html

SHOICHI IWASAKI is Professor in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at UCLA. He received his first B.A. from Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan in 1974 and his second B.A. from International Christian University (ICU), Tokyo, Japan in 1977. He received his M.A. from University of Hawaii, Honolulu, in 1979 and his Ph.D. in Linguistics from University of California at Los Angeles in 1988. The institutions he taught include University of Adelaide (Australia), Thammasat University (Thailand), Nagoya Gakuin University (Japan), and UCLA (California). His research areas are Japanese linguistics, Thai linguistics, discourse analysis, functional linguistics, language change, sociolinguistics, intercultural communication, intonation, and minority language description (Ryukyu).

For more information on Dr. Iwasaki, go here:

http://www.international.ucla.edu/japan/about/person.asp?Facultystaff_ID=101

JASON SONG is a reporter for The Los Angeles Times, where he covers the LA Unified School District. Before that, he worked at The Baltimore Sun. He's covered a lot of amazing stories and is a veteran journalist. You can read some of his latest stories at this link below:

http://articles.latimes.com/writers/jason-song

We also had a chance to meet Los Angeles Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa, whose office sponsored this event. He told us how proud he was of the diversity of winners in this writing contest and the importance of multicultural education and literature for these young students. Because the Mayor is a very busy man, I didn't get a chance to get our photo together, but at least we shook hands!

For more information on The Mayor's Office, go here:

http://mayor.lacity.org/

The winners of the Creative Writing Competition were:

Division 1 (6th to 8th grade): Jolie Ruffin-Moore (8th grade, Marina Del Rey Middle School), Matthew Saucedo (8th grade, Madison Middle School) and Natalie Niles (6th grade, McKinley School)

Division 2 (9th to 10th grade): Eduardo Chavez-Ponce (9th grade, Valley Alternative Magnet School), Maria Otilia Carrera (9th grade, Valley Alternative Magnet School), and Samson Marco Tse (9th grade, Chatsworth High School)

Division 3 (11th to 12th grade): Ericka Medina (12th grade, Pueblo de Los Angeles High School), Maggie Quan (11th grade, Abraham Lincoln High School), and Saba Davis (11th grade, View Park Preparatory High School).

Congratulations to the winners! And thank you to the Mayor's Office and the other sponsors for inviting me to be a part of this wonderful event!

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In other news, I ordered my own NaPiBoWriWee souvenir items from National Picture Book Writing Week 2009 because I was curious to see how the products looked. To my delight, they are all made of quality material! The notebook is so cute! And so is the mousepad! Here are some pictures below, and I'll make sure to keep everyone posted about any new items I put in my store:

I'll be blogging soon about some upcoming behind-the-scenes on the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators (SCBWI) National Conference coming up this August, plus interviews with Newbery medalist INGRID LAW and middle grade novelist BETTY G. BIRNEY.

And I'll post some more writing tips and will be unveiling my new manuscript consultation service, plus info on my school visits and presentation packages.

Until then, I leave you with this adorable photo of our first strawberry!

We bought our first house last September and have been transforming part of the backyard into a small garden. Right now, we are growing everything from microgreens to tomatoes and radishes, and we also have several containers filled with blueberries, lemons, and this lovely strawberry! Seeing this one beautiful strawberry amidst a sprawl of leaves and vines made me think about revising your manuscript. I know everyone who participated in NaPiBoWriWee 2009 is probably overwhelmed by their rough drafts and wondering if there is anything worth saving. Well, I figure as long as you have ONE beautiful moment or ONE important sentence that works, or ONE compelling image, that's all you need! So that's my tortured metaphor for the day - look for that ONE strawberry hiding amidst the tangled vines of your rough draft, and work on making that strawberry grow and become stronger... and sweeter!