About Isabel Campoy

F. Isabel Campoy (Alicante, Spain, 1946) is the author of numerous children’s books in the areas of poetry, theatre, fictional narrative, biographies, and art as well as of pedagogical books in the areas of Language Arts and English as a Second Language. Her work aims at providing children keys to interpret the world in a fun, challenging, and affirmative way. She is a frequent speaker in national and international conferences on issues of Transformative Education, Second Language Acquisition and Authentic Writing.

Personal Life

F. Isabel Campoy was born in Alicante, Spain on June 24, 1946, the daughter of María and Diego Campoy, an English professor.

She has traveled extensively throughout the world and is fluent in Spanish, Catalonian, English and French. Isabel can translate Italian and Portuguese. She is a student of Arab, and Russian.

After receiving a Licenciatura in English Philology at the Universidad Complutense (Madrid, Spain), Isabel pursued graduate studies at Reading University (England) and University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and the Universidad Complutense (Madrid, Spain).

Early Life

During her first 16 years Isabel lived in Spain, at a time in which dictator Generalísimo Franco had total control of every aspect of life. To escape from such an oppressive atmosphere she applied for a highly competitive American Field Service Scholarship, which she won in 1963. This granted her the opportunity to live in the United States and study at Trenton High School, in Michigan. That experience changed her life forever. Although she arrived to the States with a fair knowledge of the English language (her father was an English professor in Alicante and patiently requested his four children to speak English at home), the culture she encountered in the States required a profound adaptation and a deep understanding of self and others, here and back home. She learned to observe, to compare and contrast, to analyze and to draw similarities and differences in human beings, societies, beliefs, and ways to see life. Soon she had a world of her own that she learned to translate in order to be part of two worlds.

Translating was actually a way to improve her income while studying at the university in Valencia first, and in Madrid later. Every penny was always spent in travels. Knowing other costumes, other people’s way to live life led her first to visit every corner of Spain: Galicia, Cataluña, País Vasco, Andalucía, Extremadura, País Valenciano, León, Castilla-La Mancha and Aragón. Spain, a country the size of Texas, has four official languages and one of the richest and most varied cultural traditions in Europe. She traveled taking pictures, and taking notes for an encyclopedia of Spain that is 40 years later, still a work in progress.
From Spain she extended her trips first to the nearby countries, of Portugal, France, Italy and Morocco, and then the rest of the world.

She is still traveling.

Career

Isabel worked as the senior acquisitions’ editor for foreign languages in the College Division of Houghton Mifflin Publishing Company (Boston, MA) from 1981 to 1993.

Since 1994 Isabel has been an author of several K-6 Spanish Reading Programs for grades K to 6 [Cielo abierto, Vamos de fiesta, Trofeos, Villacuentos, Senderos, Excursiones en California] as well as a Program of English as a Second Language [Moving Into English] all published by Harcourt Brace (now Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).

She is the co-author of Gateways to the Sun / Puertas al Sol, a collection of 35 books for children about different aspects of the Hispanic culture. She has edited a number of anthologies of traditional folklore, poetry and plays.

Isabel is also the individual author of multiple books. Her extensive writing, of over 150 titles, has been recognized with the Laureate Award from San Francisco Public Library, the Reading the World Award, the Junior Library Guild Award, among others. She is a member of the American Academy of Poets, and the North American Academy of Spanish Language as well as of several organizations for the advancement of multicultural awareness and world peace.

Bibliography

Download a complete Bibliography of titles published by F. Isabel Campoy [PDF]