Marisol McDonald Doesn't Match Celebrates The Multiracial Experience

From Children's Book Press

Marisol McDonald Doesn't Match /
Marisol McDonald no combina

San Francisco, CA—What do President Barack Obama, actor Keanu Reeves, and reporter Soledad O’Brien have in common with the spunky heroine of our new children’s book, Marisol McDonald Doesn’t Match / Marisol McDonald no combina? Like nine million other Americans, they are mixed-race. While the multiracial population in the country has grown rapidly in the last ten years (especially among children), very few children’s books actually deal with the experience of being mixed-race. Marisol McDonald Doesn’t Match is a funny and lively story about a biracial soccer-playing pirate artist who doesn’t match—and doesn’t want to.

Marisol McDonald has bright red hair and golden brown skin. She loves to mix up her outfits with polka dots and stripes. For lunch, she packs a peanut butter and jelly burrito in her lunch box. To Marisol, these seemingly mismatched things make perfect sense together.

Some people don’t know what to make of Marisol—can’t she just be one or the other? Try as she might, in a world where everyone tries to put this biracial, Peruvian-Scottish-American girl into a box, Marisol McDonald doesn’t match. And that’s just fine with her.

A mestiza Peruvian American of European, Jewish, and Amerindian heritage, renowned author Monica Brown wrote this lively story to bring her own experience of being mismatched to life. Her buoyant prose is perfectly matched by Sara Palacios’ mixed media illustrations.

• Marisol McDonald follows in the footsteps of children’s book characters like Clarice Bean, Junie B. Jones, and Fancy Nancy, but focuses on the experience of being biracial.
• According to the 2010 US Census, the number of mixed-race children in the US increased almost 50% in the last decade, to 4.2 million, making it the fastest growing youth group in the country.
• Between 2008-2009, one in seven new marriages were between spouses of different ethnicities (Pew Research Center).
• Monica Brown has written nearly a dozen children's books, many of them bilingual. Her books have received many awards and honors, including the Américas Award for Children's Literature, the Pura Belpré Honor Award, and an NAACP Image Award nomination.

Marisol’s varied, distinctive lifestyle and multiracial family affirms our increasingly blended society and clearly celebrates independent thinking. Bravo!

—Kirkus STARRED Review

ABOUT THE AUTHOR & ILLUSTRATOR

Monica Brown is the author of many award-winning bilingual books for children, many of which are inspired by her Peruvian American heritage. Monica is a Professor of English at Northern Arizona University, specializing in U.S. Latino Literature and Multicultural Literature. She lives in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Sara Palacios was born in Mexico City. She holds degrees in Graphic Design, Illustration, and Digital Graphic Techniques, and is pursuing her MFA in Illustration at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. She divides her time between Mexico City and San Francisco, California.

ABOUT CHILDREN’S BOOK PRESS

Founded in 1975, Children’s Book Press is a nonprofit publishing house with a mission to promote cooperation and understanding through multicultural and bilingual literature, offering children a sense of their culture, history, and importance.

Visit our Press Room to download a PDF of this press release.