Carmel author and artist Belle Yang will be the guest speaker on Friday, March 5, at the UC Davis School of Education’s annual Words Take Wing event celebrating diversity in children’s literature.

Yang will deliver three presentations, all open to the public, at 9:30 a.m., 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. in the Vanderhoef Studio Theatre of the Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts at UC Davis. Tickets are $11 for the general public, $7 for students and can be purchased through the Mondavi Center box office: (530) 754-2787 or (866) 754-2787, or http://mondaviarts.org/.

Yang’s picture books include “Chili-Chili-Chin-Chin” (1999), “Always Come Home to Me” (2007) and “Foo the Flying Frog of Washtub Pond” (2009). She also wrote and illustrated the adult nonfiction works “Baba: A Return to China Upon My Father’s Shoulders” (1994) and “The Odyssey of a Manchurian” (1996).

The School of Education and the Children’s Center at Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento, are the sponsors of this year’s Words Take Wing, with additional support from the UC Davis Children’s Hospital.

For the past six years, the program has invited notable authors and illustrators to share a glimpse into the art of shaping stories and images that seize young hearts and minds.

“The School of Education is so pleased to offer children the opportunity to meet authors who write for them," said Joanne Galli-Banducci, teacher educator and event chair. "The morning lectures are aimed at children and will be very interactive, with the author and the children creating a story or character together. The evening lecture is open to all ages, but is a more intellectual exploration of the writer’s process."

Yang was born in Taiwan, spent part of her childhood in Japan, then emigrated to the United States with her family at age 7. She attended Stirling University in Scotland and graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a degree in biology.

She later studied art at the Pasadena Art Center College of Design and the Beijing Institute of Traditional Chinese Painting. She returned to the U.S. in 1989, following the Tiananmen Square protest from April to June of that year.

“I returned with gratitude in my heart for the freedom of expression given me in America,” she wrote in her introduction to Baba. “I returned convinced that I would firmly grasp this gift with both hands.”

About UC Davis

For more than 100 years, UC Davis has engaged in teaching, research and public service that matter to California and transform the world. Located close to the state capital, UC Davis has 32,000 students, an annual research budget that exceeds $600 million, a comprehensive health system and 13 specialized research centers. The university offers interdisciplinary graduate study and more than 100 undergraduate majors in four colleges — Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Biological Sciences, Engineering, and Letters and Science. It also houses six professional schools — Education, Law, Management, Medicine, Veterinary Medicine and the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing.