{"id":8022,"date":"2018-02-09T19:35:56","date_gmt":"2018-02-09T19:35:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=8022"},"modified":"2018-02-09T19:35:56","modified_gmt":"2018-02-09T19:35:56","slug":"utrgv-legacy-alumnus-pens-illustrates-books-on-growing-up-in-the-valley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=8022","title":{"rendered":"UTRGV Legacy Alumnus Pens, Illustrates Books on Growing Up in the Valley"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Xavier<\/a>

Xavier Garza, a UTRGV legacy alumnus, is now an award-winning writer whose inspirations come from growing up in the Rio Grande Valley. He has written 14 books \u2013 most of which he illustrated himself. His Christmas book, Charro Claus and the Tejas Kid, won the 2009-2010 Tejas Star Book Award and was a finalist in the 2009 Writers League of Texas Teddy Book Awards and the 2011 Horace Mann Upstanders Book Awards. Courtesy photo provided by Xavier Garza<\/p><\/div>\n

by Amanda A. Taylor<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

RIO GRANDE VALLEY, TEXAS \u2013<\/strong>\u00a0Xavier Garza remembers the bedtime stories his mother would tell him before he drifted off to sleep as a child. Instead of traditional fairy tales filled with castles and magic, the stories were filled with\u00a0lechuzas,<\/em>\u00a0la llorna\u00a0<\/em>and plenty of\u00a0cucuys<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like to tell people\u00a0cucuy<\/em>\u00a0stories because these were the stories that we loved as kids,\u201d Garza said.<\/p>\n

As an adult, Garza brings those traditional Rio Grande Valley folklore tales and personal accounts to life through illustrated picture books for children and novels for young adult.<\/p>\n

He says he turns his memories into mini-adventures.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope when kids read my stories, they\u2019ll think of similar experiences and sit down and write their own stories someday,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Garza, a UTRGV legacy alumnus, is now an award-winning writer whose inspirations come from growing up in the Valley. He incorporates his own interests into his stories, such as his love for\u00a0lucha libre<\/em>\u00a0(Mexican wrestling) and the creepy stories he heard growing up.<\/p>\n

For example, his story,\u00a0Juan and the Chupacabras<\/em>, won the 2007-2008 Tejas Star Book Award; it was based on real experiences Garza had hunting for the ever-elusive\u00a0chupacabras<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 a beast of urban legend known for killing livestock, especially goats, by sucking the blood from them \u2013 with his cousin.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy cousin and I would actually go through the cornfields in the back of grandpa\u2019s house and hunt for\u00a0la<\/em>\u00a0chupacabra<\/em>,\u201d he said. \u201cWe never actually found a\u00a0chupacabra<\/em>, but it was exciting for us when we were little.\u201d<\/p>\n

Garza today is a professor of art at Northwest Vista College in San Antonio, and teaches art in a middle school. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) at UTPA in 1994, and went on to get a Master\u2019s of Fine Arts (MFA) from UT-San Antonio, where he currently lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was at Pan Am, one of my best mentors was Will Martin. He helped me push myself,\u201d Garza said. \u201cThe experiences I had on campus were wonderful because my professors helped develop my abilities and ideas, instead of confining them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Almost 24 years later, Garza is the author of 14 books \u2013 most of which he illustrated himself. One of his most popular stories,\u00a0Charro Claus and the Tejas Kid<\/em>, was based on a childhood memory of Santa Claus and is always popular holiday reading.<\/p>\n

In the story, Charro Claus \u2013Santa\u2019s cousin, named Pancho \u2013 helps Santa out by delivering presents to border towns on Christmas with his sidekick Vincent, also known as the \u201cTejas Kid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Garza said the story started off as a bedtime story for his son, Vincent, and was inspired by memories of\u00a0 \u201ca Mexican Santa Claus\u201d he took photos with as a child.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dad took me to Valley Mart in Rio Grande City to take pictures with Santa, and he was dressed as a\u00a0charro<\/em>,\u201d Garza said. \u201cMy dad told me he was the Mexican Santa Claus, Pancho.\u201d<\/p>\n

Charro Claus<\/em>\u00a0(2010) won the 2009-2010 Tejas Star Book Award and was a finalist in the 2009 Writers League of Texas (WLT) Teddy Book Awards, and the 2011 Horace Mann Upstanders Book Awards.<\/p>\n

Garza said he\u2019s happy to be able to incorporate so many aspects of his culture and Valley childhood into his books in order to help keep those wonderful stories alive.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrowing up in the Valley provided me a unique culture,\u201d he said, \u201cand there are things here you won\u2019t see anywhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>

An illustration from UTRGV legacy alumnus Xavier Garza\u2019s award-winning book, Charro Claus and the Tejas Kid (2010). Illustrations for the book are by the author. Courtesy photo provided by Xavier Garza<\/p><\/div>\n

ABOUT UTRGV<\/strong><\/p>\n

The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) was created by the Texas Legislature in 2013 as the first major public university of the 21st century in Texas. This transformative initiative provided the opportunity to expand educational opportunities in the Rio Grande Valley, including a new School of Medicine, and made it possible for residents of the region to benefit from the Permanent University Fund \u2013 a public endowment contributing support to the University of Texas System and other institutions.<\/p>\n

UTRGV has campuses and off-campus research and teaching sites throughout the Rio Grande Valley including in Boca Chica Beach, Brownsville (formerly The University of Texas at Brownsville campus), Edinburg (formerly The University of Texas-Pan American campus), Harlingen, McAllen, Port Isabel, Rio Grande City, and South Padre Island. UTRGV, a comprehensive academic institution, enrolled its first class in the fall of 2015, and the School of Medicine welcomed its first class in the summer of 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Amanda A. Taylor RIO GRANDE VALLEY, TEXAS \u2013\u00a0Xavier Garza remembers the bedtime stories his mother would tell him before he drifted off to sleep as a child. Instead of traditional fairy tales filled with castles and magic, the stories were filled with\u00a0lechuzas,\u00a0la llorna\u00a0and plenty of\u00a0cucuys. \u201cI like to tell people\u00a0cucuy\u00a0stories because these were the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8023,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-valley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8022"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8025,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8022\/revisions\/8025"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}