Maria Hinojosa on Once I Was You: Adapted for Young Readers: Finding My Voice and Passing the Mic: Middle Grade Nonfiction

Anthony Vidal is a student at Miami Lakes Educational Center, where he is a staff writer and news and layout editor for the school newspaper, The Harbinger. He has interviewed politicians, activists, doctors, professors, and professionals, and in 2021 won his school's Journalist of the Year award for his work through online schooling.

Maria Hinojosa’s nearly 30-year career as a journalist includes reporting for PBS, CBS, WGBH, WNBC, CNN, and NPR, as well as anchoring and executive producing the Peabody Award-winning show Latino USA, distributed by NPR. She is also the founding co-anchor of the political podcast In The Thick and the founder of Futuro Media, an independent nonprofit organization with the mission of producing multimedia content from a Person of Color perspective. Before all her awards and achievements, Hinojosa was “a girl with big hair and even bigger dreams.” Born in Mexico and raised in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, she was always looking for ways to better understand the world around her – and where she fit in. In Once I Was You – Adapted for Young Readers: Finding My Voice and Passing the Mic (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers), a special adaptation of her 2020 2020 memoir for young readers, she combines stories from her life with observations about the United States’ complicated attitudes toward the people who cross its borders, by choice or by force.