country and, with thirty-eight books published, some of them in Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Spain, this author has attained significant international recognition.

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Iturralde's literature develops within a multicultural, ethnic, and social context. In an epoch when local and regional histories are being obliterated, and when few people are concerned with the special knowledge that has been preserved by certain local ethnic groups, a voice that weaves together fictional and ingenuous stories is transcendental. 

 

Mother of six children, she has dedicated much of her life to writing for children. Her books have been published in Colombia, Mexico, and Spain and are distributed in the United States, Peru, and Bolivia. Iturralde was the founder and director of the children’s magazine La Cometa ("The Kite"), which for fifteen years was published together with the newspaper, Hoy, from Ecuador. She has published twenty-three books concerning a variety of themes, but for the last few years, she has concentrated on narratives based on ethnicity, and she is the pioneer in this genre in the children’s literature of Ecuador. She was a professor of creative literature at the University of San Francisco de Quito.
 

Iturralde has won various prizes and nominations within and outside her country. Among the most important of these are the Ecuador National Prize for Children’s Literature Dario Guevara Mavorga in Ecuador in 2001, the Skipping Stones Award in the United States in 2002 and 2005, and the Mention of Honor of the Municipality of Quito in 2003 and 2004. Her work was selected by the SEP within the competition of the Mexican Ministry of Education in 2003 and 2005. In 2005, two of her books were nominated for the Ecuadorian Honor List of IBBY (International Board of Books for the Young). She is the president of the Ecuadorian Academy of Children and Juvenile Literature, which is associated with the Latin American Academy of Children and Juvenile Literature.

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