Guadalajara, Jalisco.- “For the indisputable quality of his works”, the writer Antonio Orlando Rodríguez was recognized with the Ibero-American SM Award Children’s and Youth Literature 2022 at the Guadalajara International Book Fair.
The representative of the jury, Rodrigo Morlesin, explained the qualities of the Cuban writer’s work that made him worthy of the award.
“For the indisputable quality and strength of his writing, for being a tamer of wordswhose work awakens the imagination of readers in ways that renew development, for being a time traveler capable of summoning the past and present from a singularity that will continue to open up new ways of feeling, thinking and inhabiting the world”, Morlesin assured.
Antonio Orlando thanked for the recognition and during his speech he told the exact beginning of his love for the written word.
“In my home when I was three and four years old, there were no books either, I did not know what they were and how much they could change your life, until as a last resort to leave me in bed during an illness, someone suggested to my mother that I read a storybook, the first one who read to me was ‘The Tin Soldier’ (…) which marked kilometer zero of my fascination with the written word”, the writer recalled, wondering if his mother, a peasant in a cane field, had read the story before.
This represented the beginning of his love for reading and the beginning of writing, since in the second year of primary school he wrote his first story about a bear that left the jungle to go to the city to be a highway policeman.
Antonio Orlando assures that in addition children’s narration allowed him to circumvent the censorship installed by the Cuban revolution.
For her part, the director of the Organization of Ibero-American States for Education, Science and Culture (OIE) assured that the The essential objective of the award is to strengthen reading in childhood and youth.
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“Reading not only discovers a world of possibilities for children, but also takes care of them, children who read have more opportunities for well-beingto know more and better, reading is essential learning for life”, assured Patricia Aldana.
The SM Ibero-American Prize for Children’s and Youth Literature is convened by the SM Foundation together with UNESCO, the Regional Center for the Promotion of Books in Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLALC), among other organizations.
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