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If you’re looking to learn about influential and important Latino figures or just introducing your child to some famous Americans, check out some of our top picks for Hispanic biographies in Spanish!

Learning about important Hispanic figures is actually pretty easy when you’re always on the lookout for books in Spanish. I’ve been pleasantly surprised with all of the interesting Spanish and bilingual biographies that my daughter and I have come across without searching too hard.

Some of the books that we’ve read feature famous people from Latin America while others feature Latinos who were born or raised in the United States.

With National Hispanic Heritage Month right around the corner (celebrated annually in the United States between September 15^th and October 15), check out some of these great reads! If you’re looking for more information on Hispanic Heritage Month, check out this site.

In this article I’ll share my top picks for Spanish biographies featuring Hispanic figures and what we like about them.

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Hispanic Biographies for Kids

A great way to celebrate Hispanic Heritage month is to learn about how Hispanics have contributed to our history and world culture. Here are some of our favorite biographies of Latino’s that are in Spanish or are bilingual editions!

I start the list with Hispanic figures who are from Latin America and end the list with those who were born or raised in the United States and are of Hispanic heritage.

This picture book tells the life story of Julio Tello. Julio was born and raised in Peru where he became an architect. During his life he made several discoveries about the indigenous history of Peru.

We loved the illustrations in this book! Most of the full color illustrations take up more than half of the page and my daughter enjoyed looking at all of the aspects of them. I really appreciated how much information this book gave about Sharuko’s life and contributions to Peruvian culture. Each page has a good chunk of text and is a lot of reading.

Pablo Neruda is one of the most noted poets of the world and this biography makes his work very accessible to young readers. The book starts off describing the young Neftali growing up in Chile and his love for the natural world and goes through his adult work as an activist for the Chilean people.

This biography is great for younger readers. There isn’t a lot of text per page and the wording is easily understandable for children. The best part of this book is obviously the illustrations. Each page is filled with colorful images of the natural landscape of Chile and within the image are ribbons of describing words and words from Neruda’s poems.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez is one of the most celebrated authors of magical realism. This biography tells about his life growing up in Colombia and how his imagination helped him to create some of the most notable Latin American novels available today. The creators of Disney’s “Encanto” also drew inspiration from his home and stories when they visited Columbia!

I like that the book introduces the concept of magic realism which is the basis for the spark in all of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ work. This book is great for elementary aged students.

Arturo Schomburg was born in Puerto Rico and later moved to the United States. As a child he noticed that the history books didn’t tell the history of his people, people of color. He spent his life researching and collecting artifacts that showed the history of the decedents of Africans in the Americas.

This book was full of really useful and interesting information! The illustrations take up 3/4 of the page and the side of the page has a long column of information about that stage in Schomburg’s life.

This book would be better suited for older elementary students or middle school readers since the text seemed more complicated and dense than other picturebook biographies we’ve read.

This pciturebook goes through the lives of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta and shows how they connected and ultimately teamed up to create meaningful change for farm workers in America.

I like that this book doesn’t just focus on Cesar Chavez and shows how there was much more of a team effort in the farm worker cause in California. The book also does a nice job of highlighting the different qualities of Cesar and Dolores from when they were children and how those qualities both served them in their fight for justice.

While these two books feature different Latinos, they have the same author/illustrator combo and have a very similar style!

Celia Cruz was born in Cuba where she was developed her love of singing. She eventually moved to New York where she became a famous salsa singers and worked with several top musicians of her time, including Tito Puente.

Tito Puente was born in New York City and grew up with a passion for drumming and rhythm. After studying at Julliard he played in a band and eventually conducted his own orchestra.

I love that these books have simple text and beautiful illustrations. They give good details about each musician, starting from when they were children all the way through to the end of their lives. I also really appreciated the author’s notes at the end where they give more detailed biographical information about Celia Cruz and Tito Puente as well as ideas about where they drew their inspiration from. Definitely check out these 2 bilingual books!

Born in New York, Sonia Sotomayor worked her way through several prestigious colleges and career opportunities to become the first Latina woman to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States.

There are several picturebooks written by and about Sonia Sotomayor but this is one of our favorites because of the amount of biographical information it gives. The story starts with Sonia’s early life growing up in the Bronx and works its way through to her career on the Supreme Court.

This picturebook is the story of Juan Felipe Herrera. The book is written in a wonderful prose that asks the reader to imagine what they can do. The story starts with Herrera’s childhood and goes through his time in school up until the height of his career as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2015-2017.

I love the message of this story and how well it is written and comes together at the end (not surprising since Herrera is the author!) While the story doesn’t have a ton of historical facts about Herrera’s life, you get a good sense of where he came from and the illustrations do a great job of adding details to the story.

I just recently came across this book when I was at the library with my daughter. I had never heard of Emma Tenayuca before and was really interested in this story. Tenayuca was born in Texas in the 1920’s and grew up with a strong sense of right and wrong.

This picturebook shows her early life growing up around pecan shellers that were treated poorly. It describes her work as an activist to get better working conditions and wages for the workers. The epilogue goes into more detail about her work as a negotiator for worker’s rights, a skilled speech giver and later a teacher for migrant families.

The story of Tenayuca brought up a lot of great talking points for me to have with my daughter (7), about poverty and what is and isn’t fair in a society. Definitely recommend!

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Looking for more Spanish book recommendations? Check out this book for Dia de los Muertos!

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It’s important to keep learning about different cultures and how influential figures from all over the world have helped to shape our history. Hispanic Heritage Month gives us a chance to reflect on some important Latinos who have made an impact.

I hope you find a biography on this list that interests you! Let me know @becomingbilingual_spn on Instagram.

Happy Learning!

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