The California Library Association Announces Beatty Award Winner Danial Aleman:
Join us in congratulating our 2024 Beatty Award-Winning Young Adult author, Daniel Aleman, for his book Brighter Than The Sun!
Brighter Than The Sun is told from the point of view of Sol Martínez, a teenage girl who has lived on the border straddling two countries and two different worlds all her life, attending school in Chula Vista, California and living with her family in Tijuana, Mexico. Sol is the only U.S. citizen in her family, so every day she stands in long lines with her friend Bruno to cross the border and go to school. After Sol’s mother dies, the teenage children Luis and Sol both have to shoulder enormous responsibility. Now that Sol is old enough to work, she can get a job in Chula Vista working early morning shifts before school. To do this, she has to live with a friend in Chula Vista, leaving her family behind, including her younger brother Diego who misses her terribly.
The California Dream is a palpable reality in Aleman’s novel, even as it sometimes feels just out of reach for teens like Sol and Bruno, actual citizens who are nonetheless treated like outsiders. Sol has to weather painful misfortunes and unjust treatment, defend the people she cares about, and show her friends and family that there is still hope for their California Dream.
Daniel Aleman is the award-winning author of Indivisible and Brighter Than the Sun. Born and raised in Mexico City, he currently lives in Toronto, where he is on a never-ending search for the best tacos in the city.
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