Thank you Derek Najera, branch manager, and the entire staff of the
Sergio Troncoso Branch Library for your work on behalf of the annual
Troncoso Reading Prizes. On February 20th, we held the ceremony to present the winners with certificates of achievement and gift cards from Barnes and Noble. I also gave each student a signed copy of one of my books.
This year we held the event at the Pavo Real Recreation Center next door, because the branch library is undergoing renovations, including tripling the size of their parking space, new carpeting, new circulation desk, and even a new paint job for the exterior. These changes are so exciting, and the renovated Troncoso Branch Library will reopen in May of 2019.
The 2018 winners of the Troncoso Reading Prizes are:
Leo Rivera and
Brianna Moreno (1st place),
Marisol Ramirez and
Judy
Aguirre (2nd place), and
Adrian Vizcarra (not in photo) and
Daniel Owen
(3rd place).
What impressed me about this year's winners was how friendly and outgoing and engaging all the students were. I talked about how important reading was for me, as a kid from Ysleta, and how essential public libraries were to improve my concentration, to apply the good family values I learned from my parents about working hard and pushing myself to get better. The
El Paso Public Library was where I learned to satisfy that intellectual hunger for ideas and stories, and I could see that hunger and focus in all of these students. Each of them reminded me of who I was many years ago. I love this community, and I will keep returning to Ysleta to award these prizes every year and to talk to these families about how they can educate themselves and their children to gain a voice, to reach their goals, and to return and help others.
Every year, we award prizes for students who read the most books between September 15-November 15. (This was our regular schedule before the library renovation, and we will probably go back to it in 2019.) The
prizes are awarded only to students within the geographical area
covered by the Sergio Troncoso Branch Library.
First
Place receives a $125.00 gift card.
Second Place receives a $100.00
gift card.
Third Place receives a $75.00 gift card.
All prizes are
gift cards from Barnes and Noble Booksellers. A total of six prizes are awarded.
Librarians
at the
Sergio Troncoso Branch Library register
readers during the eligible period of the prizes. The library staff
administers the prizes and makes final decisions on all the
prizewinners.
If you have any questions or to register
for the 2019 prizes, please contact the library staff at the Sergio Troncoso
Branch Library, 9321 Alameda Avenue, El Paso, Texas, 79907. Telephone:
915-858-0905.
"I
am and always will be the proud son of Mexican immigrants from El Paso.
My parents came from Juárez, Chihuahua, to the United States in the
1950's, newlyweds with only a few dollars in their pockets. In the east
side neighborhood of Ysleta, they built an adobe house that at first had
no electricity and an outhouse in the backyard. Yes, in Texas. They
followed other Mexican immigrants who had been coming to the United
States for decades. They followed even some Mexicans who were already in
the state before Texas was ever Texas. These Tejanos didn't cross the
border; the border crossed them.
