Concepción Martínez Pasamar, professor at the School of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Navarra, has won the award Fundación Cuatrogatos 2019, for her work "Cuando mamá llevaba trenzas". The competition seeks to "promote the study of the production publishing house in Spanish dedicated to children and young readers, and contribute to the dissemination of quality books by Ibero-American writers and illustrators". Awarded along with 19 other works, the book was selected from among 1,500 volumes from 175 publishers in 19 countries.

Professor Pasamar said that "receiving this award has been an immense and unexpected joy, because illustration and writing give me a lot of respect. Seeing such a simple work and staff among the award winners, where there are writers, illustrators and renowned publishers whom I admire very much, is still difficult for me to digest. On the other hand, the Cuatrogatos Foundation's award is an international award that covers the vast Spanish-speaking world and is granted by a committee multidisciplinary , which has no commercial interest: these are also reasons for satisfaction staff".

Published by bookolia, although the work is aimed, in principle, at children who are beginning to read independently, it is being received by a much wider public. It was written for her own children, "because I wanted to share with them a part of my report staff , inhabited by my parents and grandparents, whom they hardly knew, or were not lucky enough to meet". However, he adds, "I didn't just want to transmit the nostalgia that comes with the passage of time, but to show that we are made of what we were and that every day we continue to build ourselves as people". On the other hand, he explains that while preparing the book "I realized that it invited to contrast life experiences and to talk, as many readers have told me later, something that makes me especially happy".

The jury of the contest, made up of a team of professionals from the fields of Philology, Education, journalism, sociology, librarianship, theater and the plastic arts, described Pasamar's work as an "elegant and nostalgic" book, with "realistic illustrations of great evocative power". And it was Pasamar herself who illustrated the story with her own drawings: "Since I was a child, drawing had been an essential form of entertainment for me. This interest led me to undertake the creation of a complete album, where image and text have emerged complementarily and simultaneously. It is not that I write and then illustrate what I have written; rather, I have returned to writing because I illustrate". test is her website, with an extensive sample of her creations.

Recently published, "Cuando mamá llevaba trenzas" has been translated into Basque -by Itziar Diez de Ultzurrun- and Catalan -by Fàtima Sanmiguel- and can be purchased, as well as in bookstores, here.

The Cuatrogatos Foundation is a non-profit organization created by writers Sergio Andricaín and Antonio Orlando Rodríguez in Miami (United States), with the goal to work in favor of culture and Education. The rest of the awarded titles, as well as the finalists and recommended titles of this call for entries can be foundat available on its website.