Once, when the two Californias ran alta y baja, high and low, along the Pacific, there lived a rare and majestic bird named Nacho, the only pitacoche for thousands of miles. He was proud of his brilliant feathers and haunting songs, but what good were they with no one to share them? Then the swallows came to nest and Nacho met Lolita. His heart filled with affection. Was it possible for two such different birds to find happiness together? And what would happen to Nacho when Lolita and the other swallows migrated back to South America? Pam Munoz Ryan lives forty minutes south of the famed Mission San Juan Capistrano, considered the jewel of the California missions, where the story takes place. "After my first visit years ago, I have returned many times. It's as if an alluring siren occasionally calls me back to the cloistered adobe walls, the Serra Chapel, and the Great Stone Church. Then, like the diligent swallows, I can't resist its botanical grandeur and I must return." Ryan is the author of more than twenty-five books for children including the picture books When Marian Sang and Amelia and Eleanor Go for a Ride, both illustrated by Brian Selznick, and Mice and Beans, illustrated by Joe Cepeda, as well as her novels Esperanza Rising, Riding Freedom, and Becoming Naomi Leon. Claudia Rueda has moved around so much that at times she's felt like a migratory bird. She grew up in Bogota, Colombia, moved to California then to Spain then to Virginia. Now she nests between Stanford, California, and Bogota, Columbia. So it wasn't surprising when Rueda's extensive research sent her on the road. "I traveled to the San Juan Capistrano Mission for the St. Joseph feast celebration, to get a better sense of the place and the migratory birds," she says. "And it was so interesting to learn about cliff swallows, especially about the mud nests that they build. An average swallow nest is made from about 1000 mud pellets and the swallow wil Read Less