With the publication of Just Right Family: An Adoption Story, Silvia Lopez is achieving her dream of becoming a traditionally published author.
Lopez has been working with books for 35 years as a librarian, the last 17 as the media specialist at Ethel K Beckham Elementary in West Kendall. She turned to writing full-time after retiring.
Just Right Family was published this spring by Albert Whitman. The multi-cultural adoption story was illustrated by Ziyue Chen.
On school visits, Lopez tells the children that she was inspired to write the story because she knew a family that had adopted two girls from China.
“They were adopted at different times,” she said. “They are a close knit, sweet family.”
While that family inspired the story, Lopez added a twist.
“Instead of the second child being from China, I’m going to make the child from Haiti,” she said. “So, everybody looks different.”
Lopez said the book is a sibling rivalry story.
“It’s told from the point of view of the older sibling.”
The older child is upset that there will be a new addition to the family. She tells the parents that “the family is perfect; why do they need this baby?” How the parents deal with the sibling rivalry and the addition of a baby who will look different is beautifully handled in the multi-racial story.
When her baby sister arrives, the child takes over and tells her new sister her origin story, all about how their parents flew across the sea to adopt her and how everyone knew it was just right.
Lopez’s recent book launch for Just Right Family at Books and Books was a huge success with more than 60 people attending. She quickly sold out of books. She also presented at the Miami-Dade Library’s Family Festival at the main library in Downtown.
Lopez’s next book, Handimals: Animals in Art and Nature, has been long in the making. It’s a picture book that features painted and posed animal hand art by Italian artist Guido Daniele.
Lopez had seen Daniele’s work on a flight in 2009 in an ad and fell in love with it. She searched and searched for the artist because the work was so distinctive.
And then, while hosting a Scholastic Book Fair at Beckham, a child opened a book and showed Lopez the page, which featured Daniele.
“Now I knew who he was,” she said.
A couple of months later, she contacted him in Milan.
“He answered in five minutes and referred me to his then agent,” she said.
While they came to an agreement quickly on a book featuring the hand animals, the actual book deal was on again off again for a few years. Eventually it was sold to Henry Holt/McMillan and will come out in the fall.
In researching the animal facts, Lopez even contacted Ron Magill at Zoo Miami.
Lopez has a self-published a biography in English and Spanish called Ileana Ros-Lethinen: First Hispanic Woman in Congress. That book won first place in the Best Educational Theme Book 2017 and second-place winner in the Best Youth Chapter Non-fiction Book by the International Latino Book Awards.
She also has a series of award winning free e-books on Hummingbirds available on her website, SilviaLopezBooks.com.
“I’ve presented it to about 70 bilingual teachers,” she said. “They are using them in public schools.”
Lopez currently is working on a biography of the singer Selena. She also is writing down the folk tales she used to tell the kids as a librarian.
“I love folk tales,” she said.
