The stars love to shine on “Sesame Street.” After 40 years playing Maria, Sonia Manzano has seen them all — even rising stars she didn’t recognize.
“There was a beautiful girl playing and singing on the set one day, and she said, ‘Omigod, Maria! I’ve grown up with you!’ She turned out to be Alicia Keys.”
Puppets still rule “Sesame Street,” and Manzano recalls one child’s reaction when Big Bird puppeteer Caroll Spinney took off the top half of his suit: “Maria, does Big Bird know there’s a man inside him?” Manzano — winner of 15 Emmys, author of two children’s books and a longtime Upper West Sider — just stepped into the cast of Off-Broadway’s “Love, Loss and What I Wore.” Here’s what’s in her library.
The Warmth of Other Suns
by Isabel Wilkerson
This book won raves — one critic said the common reader would be satisfied, as would the scholar. This is about the black migration from Jim Crow South to the North and California couched in the stories of real people. My parents emigrated from Puerto Rico in the ’40s, so I’m interested in migration.
Beautiful Maria of My Soul
by Oscar Hijuelos
Remember Nestor, from Hijuelos’ book “The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love”? Nestor talks about the love he had for Maria, back in Cuba. This is the story from Maria’s point of view. It gives you a real sense of pre-Castro Havana, the music and the tragedy. It’s a very romantic story and it’s really sexy.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot Diaz
This is a big, sprawling, “Gone With the Wind”-like family saga. One of the characters is a girl who has a terrible relationship with her mother, not realizing what she suffered in the Dominican Republic. It relates to everyone because we’ve all argued with our parents, but we didn’t realize what their journey was.
Please Ignore Vera Dietz
by A.S. King
I’m writing my first young-adult novel for Scholastic, so I thought I’d read some YA novels that won acclaim. They aren’t what they used to be — there’s often alcohol, drug abuse, abandonment, murder . . . the days of Nancy Drew are so over! This is about a boy who dies. It’s told in the voice of Vera, his friend, whose father’s an old hippie. It’s a real page turner!