When I started writing Asian Pacific American Heroes, the first person I wrote about was Bruno Mars. It was daunting to capture his huge and successful life thus far in just a few paragraphs. I submitted what I had to my editors and they responded with specific questions including why Bruno Mars got dropped from his first label. What went wrong?
I honestly didn’t know so I had to dig around to find out. In doing research, I found a lot of great content on YouTube. For the month of May in celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, I am going to share with you some of the heroes that are in my book with videos that I found doing research. I hope you enjoy their backstories.
This is the CNN interview that I found about why Bruno Mars was dropped from Motown, his first record label. It was a pivotal moment in his career …
Bruno Mars had to make the jump from a rockstar performer to a songwriter and composer. It was not a painless transition. His grit and determination while keeping his fun-loving easy-going personality makes him one of my favorite Asian Pacific Heroes. It’s on full display here on James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke:
Did you know that Bruno Mars is a mixed-race Asian-Pacific American?! All this and more in Asian Pacific American Heroes. It’s available on the Scholastic Website and through Scholastic Bookclubs flyers.
p.s. All my Asian American Book Lists for Kids are here with some specific ethnicities broken out.
40+ Asian American Book Lists for Kids
- Asian American
- Korean American
- Japanese American
- Chinese American
- South Asian American
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My books:
Food for the Future: Sustainable Farms Around the World
- Junior Library Guild Gold selection
- Selected as one of 100 Outstanding Picture Books of 2023 by dPICTUS and featured at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair
- Starred review from School Library Journal
- Chicago Library’s Best of the Best
- Imagination Soup’s 35 Best Nonfiction Books of 2023 for Kids
Amazon / Barefoot Books / Signed or Inscribed by Me
Amazon / Scholastic / Signed or Inscribed by Me
