Jaguars and Butterflies is a stunning self-empowerment resource for girls of Mexican heritage. It presents an enchanting world of art and poetry that encourages girls to value and center themselves. Each colorful page is a celebration of Mexico’s cultural and geographic diversity, making Jaguars and Butterflies educational for all.

Books like Jaguars and Butterflies are needed because children make conclusions about their worth – and the worth of others – by observing social indicators such as who gets featured in media. (1) Even in Mexico, it is hard to find children’s books that center Mexican girls. In the United States, where 1 in 7 children are of Mexican descent and 1 in 4 are Latinx (2,3), only 5.3% of children’s books published in 2019 featured Latinx main characters. (4)

We seek a world in which all children see themselves in books. 10 percent of author royalties from U.S. sales are donated to the We Need Diverse Books (WNDB) Walter Grant, which supports emerging authors working to increase representation of their communities in children’s literature. 90 percent of royalties from U.S. sales and 100 percent of royalties in Mexico are reinvested in print runs and in funding the book’s translation and distribution in 11 local Indigenous languages and variants.