SING IT LIKE CELIA

Perfect for fans of The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise and Merci Suarez Changes Gears, SING IT LIKE CELIA is a revelatory story about a Mexican-American girl who finds her voice and herself with the help of her role model and icon, Celia Cruz.

Twelve-year-old Salva Sanchez has always been a lifelong fan of Celia Cruz, also known as "the queen of salsa." Her love of Celia stems from her mother, who leaves Salva without explanation one awful day. Now Salva is stuck with her investigative journalist father in a trailer park. In the middle of nowhere.

As Salva acclimates to her new environment and desperately tries to figure out why her mother left, she befriends a posse of campground kids who have started a band. When the kids discover that Salva has an amazing singing voice, they convince her to join their group. Soon, Salva learns how to find her voice and herself with the help of her newfound friends, her dad, and the one and only Celia Cruz.

Born in the small coastal town of Ensenada in Baja California, México, Mónica Mancillas (she/her) moved with her parents to the United States when she was two years old. After graduating Valedictorian from the San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts, she earned a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley, after which she moved to Los Angeles, where she worked for ten years in the recording industry. Today, Mónica runs her own business teaching children how to play the piano. She spends her days writing, reading, and tending to her daughter, husband, and dog, Annie. She lives in Burbank, California.