Largely a self-taught artist, Maya Gonzalez considers painting and art-making her vocation. She has been painting and drawing for over 40 years and has created artwork for more than 20 multicultural award-winning children's books, including My Diary From Here to There, by Amada Irma Perez and Iguanas in the Snow and Other Winter Poems, by Francisco Alarcón, winner of a Pura Belpré Honor Award. She is also the illustrator of A Room of My Own /Mi Proprio Cuartito, by Amada Irma Perez, which has won the Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children's Book Award.

Of all her children's book work she is most pleased with the My Colors, My World, a 2008 Pura Belpré Illustrator Honor, which she also wrote, and which conveys her true love for the color "hot pink." The majority of Maya's bilingual children's books have been published by Children's Book Press.

Maya's artwork has appeared in numerous art books and magazines, including the cover of Contemporary Chicano/a Art, considered the "bible" of chicano art.

She is currently finishing up illustrating her latest book, a collection of poems by Francisco Alarcón, about the Iguazu Waterfalls in Argentina (fall 2008).

Maya paints and plays in her favorite city in the world, San Francisco, where she lives with her partner and four year old daughter.

More on PaperTigers:

Read a review of Nana's Big Surprise/ Nana que sorpresa!

Check out highlights of Maya Gonzalez's visit to Stuart Hall, an all-boys school in San Francisco.

More on the web:

Read a review by Gina Ruiz of My Colors, My World, at the BlogCritics online magazine

For more information, visit her website

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