Celia C. Pérez

Profile

Celia C. Pérez is an award-winning author of books for young readers.

Her debut middle grade novel, The First Rule of Punk (Viking / Penguin, 2017), was a 2018 Pura Belpré Award Honor Book, a 2018 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award honor book, and a winner of the 2018 Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Awards and was named to several best-of-the-year lists, including NPR’s Best Books of 2017, the Chicago Public Library’s Best of the Best Books, the New York Public Library’s Best Books for Kids, School Library Journal‘s Best of 2017, and The Horn Book Magazine‘s Fanfare. Her second book for young readers, Strange Birds (Kokila / Penguin, 2019), is an Association of Library Services to Children Notable Children’s Book and was named to several best-of-the-year lists, including Rise: A Feminist Book Project List (formerly the Amelia Bloomer List), the Cooperative Children’s Book Center Choices 2020, the Center for the Study of Multicultural Children’s Literature Best Books of 2019, the Chicago Public Library’s Best Books of 2019, and the Washington Post‘s Best Children’s Books of 2019.

Originally from Miami, she is a graduate of the University of Florida and the University of South Florida. She lives with her family in Chicago where, in addition to writing books about lovable weirdos and outsiders, she works as a community college librarian. You can find her online at celiacperez.com.